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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



£ato ant ilopaltp 



£ato ami loyalty 

WITH OTHER CHARGES AND 
SERMONS PREACHED AT 
THE CONSECRATIONS 
OF BISHOPS BY 

HENRY C: POTTER 

BISHOP OF NEW YORK 




l^eto Sotft 

EDWIN S. GORHAM Publisher 
1903 



Copyrighted 1903 by 
Edwin S. Gorham 



THE Li BRAKY OF 
CCNbhtSS. 

Two Copies Receiver: 

OCT 17 1903 

Copyright fcntry 

fat ii-mn 

CLASS Is XXc. No 

1 * 1* ^ 

' COPY Li. J 



Heintzemann Press Boston 



PREFACE 



nr'HIS volume will be found to consist , about half 
J- of it, of Charges delivered to Conventions of the 
diocese of New York, between the years 1883 and 
1903 ; and the other half, of sermons preached at the 
Consecrations of Bishops. 

Elsewhere 1 / have pointed out how such composi- 
tions furnish, in large measure, the material out of 
which history is made. In the case of ecclesiastical 
history it must be so ; for that is made up not only of 
the story of acts but of opinions. In the twenty years 
covered by these pages, considerable transformations 
have come to pass, both in the view-points of scholars 
and in the intelligent estimate of the tasks and respon- 
sibilities of Ecclesiastics. 

With both these, these pages deal; and if they have 
no other value, they will at least indicate that the 
Episcopal Church has striven to face fresh emergen- 
cies with frankness and fearlessness; and will point 
leaders in its Communion to the temper and principles 
in which their work may wisely be undertaken. 

HENRY C. POTTER 

1 See Preface to << Waymarks," E. P. Dutton & Co. 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Law and Loyalty : A Charge Delivered to 
the One Hundred and 'Third Convention of 
the Diocese of New York 

The Church is a Divine Society, constituted by Christ 
Himself, and ordained for all ages and the salvation of 
all men. It must have discipline. It is, however, 
not more law but more loyalty that is needed. 

The Offices of Warden and Vestryman: 
A Charge to the Convention of 1890 

The functions of Warden and Vestryman are to care 
for property, to serve as guardians of public worship, 
and to be witnesses and exemplars of faith and con- 
duct. 

The Relation of the Clergy to the 
Faith and Order of the Church : A 
Charge to the Convention of 189 1 

The Clergy have no liberty to disown any matter of 
doctrine, discipline, or worship in any particular. For 
the one in Holy Orders who has parted with his faith 
in the supernatural element in the Holy Scriptures or 
in the person and work of Christ, there is no honest 
or honorable alternative left but to suspend his minis- 
trations, and temporarily, at any rate, to retire from 
the exercise of his sacred office, and address himself 
with prayer and abstinence, and most searching and 
candid inquiry, to an examination of the question or 
questions at issue. 

[ vii ] 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



The Teaching Office of the Church : 
A Charge to the Convention of 1900 

* * Teaching to observe " — by means of a Book and by 
means of a Rite. 

Temperance: A Charge to the Convention 
of 1902 

Temperance is self-control. This is the end to be 
sought by the individual. As to the drink-evil, it 
should be dealt with broad-mindedly and intelligently. 

Sermon: On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend George Worthington, D.D. y 
as Bishop of Nebraska 
The Powers and Power of the Episcopate: 
The Church is in the world as an organization with 
obligations not so much secular and legal as moral and 
spiritual. There needs must be overseers having both 
authority and power. Here is the power of the pa- 
ternal and fraternal spirit, and chiefly the power of 
consecration — the unreserved devotion of one's whole 
power, soul, body and spirit, to the work of his high 
office. 

Sermon : On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend Thomas F. Davies, D.D. y 
LL.D., as Bishop of Michigan 
The historic episcopate is not only an historic fact but 
an historic necessity. "The old is better/' but we 
must not get out of touch with the present. 

Sermon : On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend Phillips Brooks, D.D., as 
Bishop of Massachusetts 

A Mission is an obedience to the Voice of God. It is 
more than self-consecration — it is a setting apart for 
" the work whereunto I have called them. As my 
Father hath sent me, so send I you." 

[ viii ] 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Sermon : On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend Alexander Hamilton Vin- 
ton , D.D., as Bishop of Western Massa- 
chusetts 

The Church must exist as a real and visible mechan- 
ism, and it must enunciate preeminent and enduring 
principles. Moreover, the episcopate should be an 
episcopate of Vision. 

Sermon : On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend Alexander Mackay-Smith, 
D.D., as Bishop Coadjutor of Pennsylvania 

The value of the episcopate has been acknowledged 
by the most candid and competent of those who op- 
pose episcopacy. 

The true bishop, the true priest, the true deacon, must 
be one who can trace his lineage down by long and 
unbroken lines of hierarchal succession, and can prove 
that the lineage has thrilled down from the Holy 
Ghost on high and the Divine Love. 

Sermon : On the Occasion of the Consecration 
of the Reverend Charles Tyler Olmsted^ 
D.D., as Bishop Coadjutor of Central New 
York 

The office of the episcopate is paternal, but it is also 
constitutional. The end of proper administration of 
the episcopate is to make it great by the love that 
shines through it. 



[ « ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



A CHARGE DELIVERED TO THE ONE 
HUNDRED and THIRD CONVENTION 
OF THE DIOCESE OF NEW YORK 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



Brethren of the Clergy and Laity : 

AMONG the duties imposed upon the Episco- 
pate by the Canons of this Church is that laid 
down in Section X, of Canon 15, of Title I, 
which reads as follows : 

" It is deemed proper that every Bishop of this 
Church shall deliver, at least once in three years, a 
Charge to the Clergy of his Diocese, unless pre- 
vented by reasonable cause." It is in the dis- 
charge of this duty that I propose to address you 
this morning. 

There are two aspects of the Church whose 
Ministers and members we are which may well 
engage our attention when assembled on such an 
occasion as this. The first is that highest view 
which sees in it a Divine Society, constituted by 
Christ Himself, and ordained for all ages and the 
salvation of all men. In this view of it the Church 
is not a human polity or a human policy ; and the 
changes of time, the rise and fall of states, the ten- 
dency of particular phases of human thought, above 
all, the drift of popular sentiment, can have for it 
but secondary and inferior interest. It belongs to 
a kingdom which cannot be shaken. Its Head is 
named to it in those inspired words which describe 
Him to us as " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday 

[3] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and to-day and forever." Men may come and go, 
but He who is God over all endures unchanged 
and unchangeable, and that Church which is His 
Body, the fullness of Him that nlleth all in all, 
can but repeat in her prayers and sermons and 
sacraments the message of St. John the Divine : 
" Brethren, I write no new commandment unto 
you, but an old commandment, which ye have 
heard from the beginning/' 1 There is a temper 
which treats the Church and the Truth of which 
she is the keeper as if the one were a popular lec- 
turer and the other the ever-shifting fragments of 
a kaleidoscope. To interest and entertain and 
divert, whether by our teaching or our services, 
this, we are told, is our calling in this stirring and 
exacting generation ; and unless we can do this our 
presence is an anachronism, and our message only 
little less than an impertinence. Of the Church 
as God's witness and messenger in the world, and 
of His unchanged and unchanging Truth as the 
one message which men supremely need, there is 
a great deal in the temper of these days that more 
than doubts — that openly denies. 

We may well recognize such a temper, and our 
own duty in regard to it. Nothing is gained in 
the long run, and everything is in danger of being 
lost, by that amiable spirit of concession which, 
fearing to seem disputatious or controversial, re- 
frains from the calm, temperate, but clear and defi- 
nite statement of the Church and her position in 
the world, as something in a very real sense " let 
down out of heaven," not a merely human asso- 

1 ist Epistle of St. John, ii. 7. 

[4] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



ciation, but rather a divine and supernatural or- 
ganism, charged with supernatural powers, the 
steward of those mysteries of the kingdom which, 
like the secret of the divine life, whether in the 
soul of man or in the heart of Christ, is hid with 
Christ in God. As such, the Church is not a 
creature of change, nor an institution of the hour. 
It belongs to that realm of which the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews writes, when he says : 
" And this word, c yet once more,' signifieth the 
removing of those things that are shaken, as of 
things that are made, that those things which can- 
not be shaken may remain." 

But when we have recognized this fact, there 
remains another, which equally, if not so urgently, 
concerns us here. The Church has her permanent 
elements, which are of God. She has her variable 
elements, which are of men. She was as truly a 
Church in the upper room in Jerusalem as in the 
councils of Nicaea or of Constantinople, and her 
discipline, e.g., was as binding in the one case as 
in the others, though the contrasts which those 
assemblages presented were probably as striking 
and as significant as any which have been presented 
in the history of Christendom. In a word, from 
time to time emergencies arose which, while they 
did not touch the substance of the Faith, required 
such human action as men divinely guided could 
devise, to meet and provide for them. That such 
action was in the line of the Church's calling and 
commission is made plain the moment that we 
recall the terms of that commission as given to the 
Apostolic College. There were to be binding and 

[5] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

loosing; there was to be, as in the notable instance 
in the Acts of the Apostles, when a controversy 
arose as to the observance of the law by Gentile 
converts, a consensus of the Church corporate for 
the settlement of differences. In one word, there 
was to be discipline. If anybody supposes that the 
Church of the first century was left to develop 
itself, in every town and village to which it came, 
according to individual preferences, he has only to 
read one book — the New Testament — to cor- 
rect that impression. From the beginning there 
was a centre of authority, the apostles first, and 
then the apostles and brethren; and whether it 
was a question of meats or of an offending brother, 
as in the Church of Corinth, there was a firm hand 
with which to decide it. 

There are many of us who are sighing for such 
a hand to-day. " Where is the discipline of the 
Church, and when shall we see it restored to its 
ancient and pristine vigor ?" it is asked. And 
there is much, it must be owned, in the aggressive- 
ness of certain lawless forces in our own generation, 
which, though they are to be seen rather without 
than within the Church, help to emphasize such 
an inquiry. 

What our German brethren call the "Zeitgeist" 
is not, it must be owned, a very reverent or a very 
law-abiding spirit, and there are not a few even of 
those whose sympathy with freedom, whether of 
thought or of action, has been most ardent, whose 
enthusiasm has, in these days, been greatly chilled 
by recent developments of the absence of discipline 
in connection with social license in our own land, 

[6] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

which are not fuller of significance than they are 
of peril. Certainly, it ought to set us thinking 
when, in the freest nation in the world, the mani- 
festations of lawlessness and anarchy in things sec- 
ular have of late been the most outrageous and 
unwarrantable. We have been taught from our 
youth that that is the best government which gov- 
erns least. We have been told that the license of 
to-day, if there be license, is an inevitable reaction 
from the over-strictness of earlier and less en- 
lightened times. We have listened to the preacher 
and the orator while they have rung the changes 
upon our fathers' intolerance, and their children's 
emancipation, and have been bidden to own the 
super-excellence of the times that are, over the 
days that are past. And, when we come to look 
for it, what do we find ? I do not deny that we 
find a spirit more tolerant of differences of opinion, 
and more patient with error and the errorist. But 
leaving out, for the moment, the question whether 
this tolerance and this patience are not sometimes 
the fruits of a wide-spread indifference and care- 
lessness concerning all truth — putting aside, in 
other words, the question whether generosity is 
not only another name for faithlessness — this fact 
remains, that, out of this new age of liberty has 
come a new era of license, whose tokens are about 
us on every hand. At the foundation of the state 
lies the family, and he who does not see the tokens 
of this license there must be strangely insensible 
to a great deal that surrounds him. It is not 
merely that the old-fashioned forms of respect and 
docility have vanished. I know very well that 

[7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

when we point to this we are told that it is simply- 
one feature of an age in which all forms of cere- 
mony have come to be less esteemed, and that 
life is not a less kindly and orderly thing because 
its outward conventions are less stately and elabo- 
rate. But if this be so, then domestic life ought 
only to have exchanged the old forms of deference 
and obedience for a new and heartier and more 
instinctive spirit in this direction. Will anybody 
pretend that it is so ? Can it be truly said that 
the nurture of the home is as godly in its spirit 
and habits, and as restraining and sanctifying in 
its results, as it was when rule was more resolute 
and obedience more habitual ? It is not necessary, 
in order to make out a case here, that we should 
limit our observation to those homes in which rule 
of any sort is notoriously absent, and from which 
the sanctions of duty have wholly departed. It is 
not alone among those to whom the religion of 
Christ comes with no voice of authority, and to 
whom the teachings of His Church and His Word 
are meaningless things, that the sceptre of domes- 
tic authority has fallen from the hands divinely 
appointed to hold it, and that self-will has usurped 
the throne. Childhood, almost any and every- 
where among us, is indeed a smarter and perter 
thing than of old ; but the swift and unquestioning 
obedience, the docile and cheerful acquiescence, 
the compliance without murmur, and the assent 
without retort — these are becoming characteristics 
of youth so rare as to be almost surprising, and so 
little looked for, apparently, as to be unnecessary. 
That elective principle in education which the 

[8] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

newer culture proposes to introduce into the train- 
ing of half-grown boys has come to be the rule of 
the nursery, not infrequently, as well, and of all 
the nurture which lies beyond it, till childhood is 
left, practically, to choose its own way. 

Is it any wonder that such a nurture breeds its 
appropriate fruits in the society of which it is a 
part? Of more violent forms of lawlessness, save 
as they have been illustrated in the acts of foreign 
adventurers, we have, perhaps, thus far been largely 
free; but it is idle to deny that, when classes or 
individuals with a grievance take the law into their 
own hands, there is often a broad undercurrent 
of sympathy in certain quarters with their most 
unwarranted acts. When lawlessness threatens our 
own convenience or property, we are, it is true, 
ready enough to rebuke it, but this side of some 
such limit, it is plain that the public press and the 
public orator can furnish individual advocates of a 
system of righting supposed wrongs to person or 
property, which, if once it were to prevail, would 
conduct us back again, by a very short road, to a 
condition of barbarism. Riot and violence have 
been temporized with, in instances with which we 
are all familiar, after a fashion which offered a pre- 
mium to their repetition, and virtually condoned 
their grossest outrages in advance. Nothing has 
made it harder for right-minded men, whether as 
capitalists or employers, to deal justly and gener- 
ously with the laborer, than the shield which has 
been thrown about wrong-doers who have pre- 
tended to serve the working-man by breaking those 
laws which are equally his defence and the wage- 

[9] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

payer's; and if the large-hearted and unselfish en- 
deavors of these latter have halted on their way to 
some more fraternal consideration for those whom 
they employ, it has not infrequently been because 
concessions made under a half-threat have seemed 
to them but paying one more premium upon the 
lawlessness which a weak forbearance has too 
widely encouraged. 

It is not to be expected that a drift which is so 
apparent in other relations, which begins in the 
home and reappears in the street and the factory, 
should be wholly absent in the Church. And, in 
fact, it is not. That Divine Society, whose living 
Head is Christ, is made up of fallible men, con- 
cerning whom one preeminent both in intellectual 
gifts and spiritual graces has reminded us that 
"we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the 
excellency of the power may be of God, and not 
of men." And so it has come to pass that once 
and again, and again, in the Church's history, her 
external life has reflected, in greater or less degree, 
the spirit of the age in which she was striving to 
do her work. For the evidences of this, so far as 
they apply to other times than our own, we need 
not go back a great way; and, indeed, there is 
some considerable element of consolation for those 
who believe that the Church, as well as the State, 
is now threatened with an era of lawlessness and 
self-will, in the knowledge that that which some 
may think that we have to-day, in a limited mea- 
sure, to deplore among ourselves, must have been 
far more characteristic of some comparatively re- 
cent times. Wrote Archbishop Bancroft in his 

[IB] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Survey of the Pretended Holy Discipline, 1 speaking 
of the English Puritans of his day : 

" How carelessly subscription is exacted in 
England, I am ashamed to report. Such is the 
retchlessness of many of our Bishops on the one 
side, and their desire to be at ease and quietness 
to think upon their own affairs ; and on the other 
side, such is the obstinacy and intolerable pride of 
that factious sort, as that, betwixt both sides either 
subscription is not at all required, or, if it be, the 
Bishops admit them (the Puritans) so to qualifie 
it that it were better to be omitted altogether. 
There is no Church established in Christendom 
so remisse in this point as the Church of Eng- 
land ; for in effect every man useth and refuseth 
what he listeth. Some few of late have been re- 
strained who had almost raised the land into an 
open sedition. But else, they follow their own 
fancies and may not be dealt withal (forsooth), for 
fear of disquietness." 

In fact, that whole period of the Church's his- 
tory which may be included between the year 
1539, when Henry VIII promulgated the act 
" for abolishing of diversity of opinions in certain 
articles concerning religion," and which came to 
be popularly known as " the whip with six 
thongs," and our own day, has been marked at 
various times, and in various degrees, by depar- 
tures from the law of the Church as construed by 
the constituted authorities, which have been the 
occasion of profound disquietude and not infre- 
quently the gravest apprehension, so that when 

« P. 249. 

[»] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

one reads, as in Strype's Parker, 1 such words as 
these : 

" There is crept and brought into the Church 
by some few persons, abounding more in their 
own senses than wisdom would, and delighting in 
singularities and changes, an open and manifest 
disorder, and offence to the godly, wise, and obe- 
dient persons, by diversity of opinion, and spe- 
cially in the external, decent, and lawful rites and 
ceremonies to be used in the Churches ; so as, 
except the same should be speedily withstanded, 
stayed and reformed, the inconvenience thereof 
were like to grow from place to place, as it were 
by an infection" — when, I say, one reads words 
like these out of the story of the Church's life in 
our forefathers' days, they will seem to some not 
less appropriate to the situation in the latter half 
of the nineteenth century than they were to her 
state in the middle of the sixteenth. 

And it is idle, I think, to deny that such a feel- 
ing exists in the minds not merely of critical and 
fault-finding people, contracted, unscholarly, and 
prejudiced, but also of many to whom the Church's 
comprehensive spirit has been an element of its 
glory, and who have rejoiced to call themselves 
Catholic Churchmen in no narrow and partisan 
sense. It is this, I am disposed to think, that 
largely explains that reluctance to take any deci- 
sive step in the direction of liturgical enrichment 
or relaxation of which we are having just now so 
many evidences. The liberties so freely taken 

1 Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. Appendix 
XXIV, 66. 

[12] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

with the rubrics by some of the clergy have 
awakened a feeling of hostility on the part of 
many Church people to what appears to them a 
movement in the direction of greater license ; and 
to account for the apparent reaction which is to 
be noted in some quarters against any increased 
freedom in the use of the Prayer-Book, we must 
go deeper, so far as the great mass of Church 
people are concerned, than distaste for any par- 
ticular proposals, whether they be those of the 
Book Annexed or any other. All proposals for 
change are regarded alike by a large and compara- 
tively silent constituency, of whom we hear very 
little, as the letting out of water, and the letting 
down of the dikes which rubrics and custom have 
thrown up around something like uniformity in 
the Church's worship. This sentiment is making 
itself felt in many ways and in more than one 
place ; and its chief significance, I think, lies in 
this, that it indicates a love of order, and a dread 
of individual license which has been largely kindled 
into alertness by the events of the past few years. 

And therefore I believe that much the surest 
way to a larger freedom than we have, and to an 
enrichment of our offices which will be welcomed 
instead of suspected, will be a scrupulous regard 
for existing obligations and for existing restric- 
tions, coupled, by all means, with the freest and 
frankest criticisms of them at the proper times and 
places : by which I mean through the press, on the 
floor of Conventions, in Convocation, and wher- 
ever the clergy and laity are assembled on other 
occasions than those of public worship. 

[13] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

It is not of richness and variety in the Church's 
offices that thoughtful people are apprehensive. 
These recognize that a Church which is Catholic 
in name must needs provide for the worship of 
her children in no narrow and sectarian spirit. 
Nay, more, to return to that larger view of the 
whole subject which we are considering, such per- 
sons have also cheerfully recognized that of which 
no student of our formularies can be ignorant, and 
which their language plainly enough indicates — I 
mean the fact that they were designed to accom- 
modate more than one school of opinions within 
the limits of the Church's fellowship, and that 
they imply by their very existence the right of 
different individuals to hold and state the truth in 
varying aspects of it, and with different modes of 
expression. But they feel that in more than one 
instance the variable liberty of the individual 
teacher or believer has been overpassed, and that 
opinions are held and proclaimed which cannot 
by any honest process of reasoning be reconciled 
with fidelity to the standards of the Church, or to 
the vows which bind those who are its children. 
And looking about them, such persons urge, with 
a force which can hardly be gainsaid, that tolera- 
tion in a Body which professes to hold and teach 
revealed Truth must have its limits, and that to 
disregard these is not to invite confidence but to 
deserve contempt. They urge — and again it 
must be owned that they are warranted in what 
they urge — that the need of our time is, what- 
ever else it may be, not a flaccid and invertebrate 
religion, in which dogma is opinion and doctrine 

[H] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

a private theory, but a Faith which plants itself 
upon historic foundations, and which can furnish 
scriptural and apostolic warrant for its teaching. 
That many people are impatient of such things 
and disparage them is, they think — and surely 
again they are right in so thinking — no better 
argument for dispensing with them than that 
which a child can urge for resenting the discipline 
of the school-room, or a sick man for refusing to 
take those other wholesome medicines which are 
as distasteful to many as the medicine of the Gos- 
pel. And they further declare that the good-na- 
tured but over-yielding concession in this direc- 
tion, of which the air is full, is something which 
now, at any rate, the time has come to resist ; that 
so much liberty has been conceded as to make it 
doubtful whether already the Church's honor, as 
charged with the custody of a divine depositum, 
not to be impaired, still less to be disparaged or 
disowned, is not seriously imperiled. Men are 
asking, in a shifting and changeful age, for some- 
thing that is permanent and explicit. Amid all 
the contradictory voices of the moment, there is a 
deep hunger for tones at once clear, commanding, 
and consistent. If once there was One whose 
voice brought deepest conviction because He 
" spake with authority and not as the Scribes," 
surely that Body which derives its very being 
from Him must speak with the same tones, and 
command assent for the same reason. And if 
anywhere within its fellowship there are those who 
will not hearken to that voice, then that disciplin- 
ary power, which is as truly a note of the Church 

L«s] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

as its doctrine or its sacraments, must, we are told, 
be invoked to deal with them. 

As we have abundant reason to remember, this 
demand has been obeyed more than once in our 
own generation, and in our own branch of the 
Church Catholic, against what have been declared 
to be errors in belief and teaching, whether by the 
pen, the pulpit, or ritual observance. The history 
of the half century which is drawing to its close 
has been marked by ecclesiastical trials touching 
matters of doctrine and of ritual whose history is 
abundantly familiar to those to whom I speak. 
The judgments in these various cases have been 
formally recorded and duly promulgated. But 
what shall we say of their results ? I am not eager 
to defend them, and I am not unmindful of the 
criticism that has challenged them. In the case of 
the well-known Purchas Judgment, e. which 
may be taken as an illustration of others, it must be 
owned, I think, that the rulings of the Court were 
not always in strict accordance with the principles 
and rubrics by which it professed to be governed, 
and I am personally quite free to acknowledge that 
Sir John T. Coleridge's argument as to the true and 
plain force of the Act of Uniformity, and the fa- 
mous " Ornaments Rubric," has never seemed to 
me to have been fairly met or answered. 

In that case, however, the decision of the Judi- 
cial Committee of the Privy Council was plain 
enough, and yet no one here needs to be told how 
widely it has been disregarded. The constitution 
of the Court was challenged quite as freely as its 
rulings, and in instances where its opinion was 

[,6] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

shown to be that of both the Archbishops of the 
Church of England, that opinion was as unhesi- 
tatingly dismissed, not always with even scant 
respect, as though it had been the judgment of 
laymen. 

And so in the case of other ecclesiastical trials, 
such as those involving the teaching of some of 
the contributors to the volume known as Essays 
and Reviews. Looking at them from this distance, 
and in the calm light of a more dispassionate judg- 
ment, it cannot be very difficult to form an opin- 
ion as to the measure of influence which these 
various judicial proceedings have had upon subse- 
quent teaching, whether as to doctrine or practice. 
That they have greatly restrained those against 
whom they were directed, whether in one direction 
or another, is something of which, I think, it must 
be confessed the evidence is very scanty. 

"Very well, then," it may be urged, "if it be 
true that the law, whether in our mother Church 
or our own, is not sufficiently stringent or explicit 
to restrain the lawless, is it not high time that it 
should be made so, and are not our present eccen- 
tricities of doctrine and of practice in the Angli- 
can communions in both hemispheres an urgent 
reason for such ecclesiastical legislation as shall 
make the net of the Church's discipline at once so 
fine and so firm that no single offender can wriggle 
out of it ? You procrastinators in this matter have 
been telling us that the policy of wisdom was the 
policy of forbearance, and that a wayward individ- 
ualism would yield, sooner or later, to a generous 
patience with its extravagances. You are never 

[>7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

tired of maintaining that that maxim of the state, 
already quoted, which affirms that 'that is the best 
government which governs least,' is a sound one. 
How are you pleased with the fruits of this theory 
of discipline? Are there not circumstances in 
which forbearance is simply a premium paid to 
self-will, and can we hope for purity of teaching 
and life in the Church, if they who are set to bear 
rule in her exercise no authority, and refrain, 
whether from timidity or good nature, from using 
the powers with which they have been intrusted ? 
Is not this to present to men a spectacle of impo- 
tence or indifference just where there is need, 
to -day, of an earnest concern and a resolute cour- 
age ? And if it be urged that the condition of our 
Canon Law is such that there is almost as much 
danger, owing to its vagueness and indefiniteness, 
in invoking it as in letting it alone, is not this a 
reason, not for clinging to the policy of laisser 
aller, which, with its apparently hopeless acquies- 
cence, recalls that scene in St. Paul's shipwreck 
where, when the ship could not bear up into the 
wind, they simply let her drive, 1 but rather for the 
exercise of that power to decree Rites or Ceremo- 
nies, and if to decree, then to forbid, and that 
authority in controversies of Faith, 2 which, as 
national and autonomous, the Church's standards 
explicitly claim for her ? To what better task, in 
other words, could the Church address itself, than 
the formulating and adopting of such a body of 
Canon Law as shall lift all doubtful questions out 
of the realm of uncertainty, and establish once for 
T Acts, xxvii, 15. 2 Art. XX. 

[is] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

all such a clear and explicit prescript of teaching and 
practice that he who runs may read ? Nay more : 
is there not an especial demand for some such 
action as this in that other inadequacy of our Canon 
Law to secure appeal from an incompetent or par- 
tial ecclesiastical tribunal to another at once wise 
and dispassionate ? " 

There are very few of us, I presume, to whom 
such a course has not strong elements of attrac- 
tion, and who do not turn from what they are 
disposed to regard as a painful lack of discipline, 
to Communions where another and very different 
condition of things is supposed to exist. Let us 
look at one of the most venerable and numerous 
of these for a moment, and see, if we can, what 
light it throws upon this question. In speaking 
of other Religious Bodies of which thoroughness 
and efficiency of discipline are supposed to be a 
note, I need hardly refer to those Communions 
which took their rise, whether coincidently with 
or subsequent to the revolt of Luther against the 
authority of the Roman Communion, whether 
they are to be found in foreign lands or our own. 
There is undoubtedly one road to definiteness of 
doctrine and uniformity of practice which these 
have found, and which it is not difficult for any 
one to find, if only he has the audacity and the 
ignorance that are necessary to take it. To start 
from the centre of the individual — to ignore the 
history of the Catholic Church as the witness to 
an authoritative truth — to admit only that as of 
force which squares with a preconceived construc- 
tion of Holy Scripture and ancient authors — to 

[»9] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

draw a sharp line about certain pet opinions and 
dismiss all the rest that lays claim to the faith and 
homage of men to the limbo of exploded opinions, 
— this process, which is not unlike that other 
"which makes a solitude and calls it peace," is 
easy enough if once one can bring the mind to con- 
sent to it. I venerate the piety and respect the 
learning of many of our Christian brethren of 
other names. In every one of them I see some- 
thing which the Church might well emulate and 
imitate. But they seem to me to have often 
gained compactness at the expense of Catholic 
truth, and if half of what one hears be true, they 
have not gained even peace always by breaking 
away from either the Faith or the Order of earlier 
centuries. 

But there is a Body, we are told, which has on 
its side the weight of a great deal that is unques- 
tionably Catholic tradition, and the added strength 
of a thoroughly organized and venerable hier- 
archy. " Let us not be ashamed to own," it is said, 
"that in this matter Rome is our true teacher, 
and her vast and far-reaching code of discipline 
that which, in substance, our times and our branch 
of the Church demand. We do not so much need 
a new digest of Canon Law of our own, as we need 
to reenact those laws for the regulation of faith 
and worship which were once the possession of 
the undivided Church Catholic, and which have 
long lain ready to our hand." 

It will be well for us to understand distinctly 
what is meant by such phrases as these, and, to do 
so, we may well recall the history of what is known 

[20] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

as Canonical Discipline. That discipline does not 
owe its origin to later times ; it dates from the be- 
ginning. In his essay on State , Church, and the 
Synods of the Future, an eminent Anglican author- 
ity 1 has shown with great clearness that "the 
Code of the Universal Church was no after- 
thought, like the old Decretals, no invention of 
popes, or emperors, or kings, or people. Its first 
document is the eighty-five c Canons Apostolical/ 
and four centuries passed away before these or 
any other laws of the Church were formally incor- 
porated with any of the laws of this world." But, 
as the same authority has pointed out, " during 
the period which followed the first incorporation 
of the Church with the state, viz., from Constan- 
tine's day to ours, there has been not only ... a 
change in the power of Synods ; not only a limi- 
tation of their action in reference to matters of 
the Faith, but the growth of that vast body of 
Laws enacted by Provincial and National Synods 
widely irreconcilable, at times, with each other. 
In the fourth century there was at once an un- 
paralleled outburst of synodical action. It was 
emphatically an age of Councils of every kind. 
The first collection of Canons, containing all that 
were most generally known, is that mentioned 
with approval by the General Council of Chal- 
cedon in the year 451. It is usually described as 
the c Code of the Oriental Church.' But this 
Code of 165 Canons was drawn from the East. 
Dionysius Exiguus, early in the next century, 
enlarged the collection, and made a Latin version 
1 Prebendary Irons. 

[2,] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

of them, which, with some further additions, Pope 
Adrian I presented to Charlemagne nearly three 
centuries later. But during all this period Canons 
of Synods were growing in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa. They became so numerous and burden- 
some that in the twelfth century a monk of the 
Benedictines in Bologna was engaged to draw up 
an Epitome of the Canons of Councils. It ap- 
peared under the title of Concordia Biscordantium 
CanonumJ This is the celebrated c Decretum ' of 
Gratian, which, with all its forgeries, was approved 
by Pope Eugenius III, and is the substance of 
the Roman Canon Law now." It is interesting 
to note that this collection of Laws for the disci- 
pline of the Church contains no less than 3,000 
Canons or Capitularies. 

Now, then, what has been the result of this mul- 
titudinous and microscopic legislation ? I shall 
not be so bold as to answer this question with 
any mere opinion of my own. It is answered by 
the eminent authority from whom I have just 
quoted, who states what cannot be gainsaid when 
he declares that this " attempt in the Latin Church 
to construct a consistent and rigid body of Canon 
Law out of all the preceding codes, ,, and designed, 
he might have added, to meet all conceivable 
emergencies, "is a gigantic monument of self- 
confessed failure. From the Apostolic Canons 
to the Decretum, from the Decretum to the Syl- 
labus of Pius IX, there is no unity unless it 
be that unity" in certain fundamentals in which 
all Christians are agreed. " Nowhere, above all," 
says Prebendary Irons, " is the discipline of the 

[22] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Canon Law obeyed, or in a condition to be 
obeyed. " 1 

In the light of facts such as these, and they 
might be multiplied by a reference to ecclesiastical 
legislation much nearer home, two things are clear : 
first, that such elaborate and minute systems of 
ecclesiastical discipline are called into being only 
to fall into a speedy condition of desuetude ; and, 
again, that they are not used because in practice 
their application is found to be impossible. To 
draft and enact Canons is relatively an easy task; 
but it may readily come to pass, when they are 
enacted, that the business of enforcing them shall 
reduce the Episcopate to the tasks of a drill-ser- 
geant, inspecting uniforms and inflicting small 
penalties for microscopic infractions of the law, 
or else convert the Church into a huge Inquisito- 
rium, in which one-half its members are employed 
in watching for the derelictions or sitting in judg- 
ment upon the offences of the other. I leave out 
of account, for the moment, the question whether 
in this Church, constituted as are her legislative 
bodies in this land, we could ever hope to get 
such a system as I have sketched, though I con- 
fess I think that question might wisely employ 
those who are calling for more legislation and new 
Courts of last resort, — I leave out of account the 
graver and more important question whether such 
a system would not extinguish more life than it 
would conserve : does anybody doubt, for instance, 
that if the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Church of 
England had had the power, they would not have 

1 State f Churchy and the Synods of the Future, p. 119. 

[23] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

crushed out that school of opinion and practice in 
that Church to which we owe the life and work 
of such men as saintly and heroic Charles Lowder? 
all this, I say, I leave out of account. It is enough 
for us to recognize the fact that in that Com- 
munion in which antecedently, because of its de- 
struction of individual freedom, we should expect 
the system of microscopic and multiform disci- 
plinary legislation to be most successful, it has not 
produced the results which are supremely to be 
desired, whether in the conduct of the individual, 
or in the life of the whole Body. Any one who 
wants to know what the discipline of the Latin 
Communion is worth, would do well to listen to 
the teaching of a Roman priest in Spain, and then 
to note the life of a Roman priest in South 
America. Discipline in the Latin Communion 
there undoubtedly is, but it is very apt to be such 
discipline as was described by Cardinal de Bonne- 
chose, in the French Senate, not so long ago, 
when he said : "Mon clerge est comme un regiment : il 
doit marcher, et marche." 1 If this is what the 
Church wants, then it has, thus far, been very 
unsuccessful in making its want known. 

What, then, remains ? If there are evils which 
are not to be remedied by making more laws, how 
are those evils to be dealt with ? Are we to dis- 
miss the whole subject as one involving difficulties 
for which there is no solution, and accept that 
easy-going definition of the Church, which regards 
it as the rightful home of all sorts of opinions in 
doctrine, and all sorts of practices in worship ? I 

1 Speech in the Senate of France, delivered in 1865. 
[«4] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

know that there are those who tell us so, and who 
maintain " for all teachers and hearers the right to 
profess and hold by their honest opinions. " But 
in making such a claim, those who make it, as one 
of its champions, Dr. Martineau, has lately been 
opportunely reminded, 1 are wholly beside the 
mark. All teachers have that right now, but the 
ct question is, whether they ought to be allowed to 
exercise that right within the bounds of the Church, 
or to exercise it only as the right to dissent from 
the Church. So long, indeed, as the Church is 
regarded merely as a body held together by a 
vague moral sympathy, or by a common desire to 
do good in philanthropic ways, it is easy to claim 
the right to profess all opinions within it; but that 
is just the view of the Church which to-day is at 
issue. Opinion, or, in other words, truth, is not 
a matter indifferent to the life of the Church; a 
common doctrine is not indeed the complete dif- 
ferentia of the Church, as we understand it, but it 
is a part, and a most important part, of it. We 
are, we are told, to have sympathy, union, common 
worship among the c seekers after God.' But how 
is common worship possible when there is no 
common thought of God ? Most serious men will 
call themselves, in one sense or another, seekers 
after God: are there, then, no limits to the in- 
clusiveness of the Church P Surely it is the most 
utter absurdity, in days when religious phraseology 
is used, with more or less sincerity, to cover every 
form of scientific or aesthetic £ Schwarmerei,' to pro- 
pose that any one who chooses to call himself a 
1 See The Guardian, No. 2122, p. 1 1 3 7. 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



{ seeker after God' shall have his place in the 
Church, whether he submits to its scriptural ordi- 
nances and accepts its Catholic doctrine or no, and 
his grievance, if the Church's worship goes beyond 
or falls below his peculiar opinions. The Church, 
as we have been taught to understand the term, is 
not a fortuitous concourse of antipathetic beliefs, 
but a fellowship based upon a common acceptance 
of a common doctrine, and if so, if, in other words, 
it is once granted that community of faith is essen- 
tial to a Church, then . . . the only remaining 
question is as to the amount of variation that can 
be tolerated, or, in other words, the nature of the 
limitations that must be imposed." 

And to this question the answer, one would 
suppose, is plain enough. The Church in this 
land has her standards of Faith, embodied in the 
Creeds and Offices and Articles, which, taken to- 
gether with Holy Scripture, are her Rule of Faith. 
In the interpretation of these there always has been 
and there always will be a certain latitude of con- 
struction for which every wise man will be de- 
voutly thankful. But that that latitude exists is 
no more certain than that it has its limits, and 
that the transgression of these limits, by whatever 
ingenuity it has been accomplished, has wrought 
only evil in lowering the moral tone of the Church, 
and in debilitating the individual conscience, is, I 
think, no less certain. The late Dean Hook, in 
writing of Anglican Church Principles, 1 relates this 
incident : " Not long since, an avowed Freethinker 
was required to sign the Thirty-nine Articles as a 

1 The Church and the Age, p. 37. 

[»«] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

condition to his admission to some University 
office. He did not withhold his signature for a 
minute : he only added, c I put my own construc- 
tion on the Articles, and I sign them with the un- 
derstanding that, by doing so, I merely declare the 
indisputable fact that I profess to be a member of 
the Church of England,' and so ready," added Dr. 
Hook," are men to applaud a defiance of authority, 
that it was in the midst of a buzz of applause that 
he did what to some men would appear to be an 
act of dishonesty." There are very few of us, I 
presume, who in accepting the Articles would not 
regard ourselves as warranted in construing them, 
like any other human document, in the light of 
their history; but to accept them, or any other 
part of the Church's teaching, with one hand, and 
with the other to throw it altogether over the wall, 
this certainly is a " defiance of authority" which it 
is difficult to reconcile either with rectitude of 
principle or with loyalty of intention. 

With loyalty of intention, I say; and here I 
submit, brethren of the Clergy and Laity, we ap- 
proach the practical solution of this whole problem. 
Out of all the conflict and clamor of opinions, 
above all the vagaries of individual sentiment or 
inclination, there rises that thing which we call 
loyalty, whether to God, or our country, or our 
Mother the Church. When, the other day, that 
common heritage which we had received from our 
fathers was in jeopardy, what was it that saved it? 
Not, certainly, that all those who made sacrifices, 
now of life, and now of property, were equally 
clear that either the policy of the government or 

[»7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

the opinions of those who administered it were, in 
every particular, in accordance with their own, but 
that the government was the symbol and embodi- 
ment of that rightful supremacy and rule, without 
which civilization becomes anarchy, and the state 
reverts to barbarism. There are times when it 
may easily be that the law seems in its restrictions 
or its exactions to press hardly, and when earlier 
constructions and limitations of constitutional priv- 
ileges may appear outworn and superannuated. 
And, again, there are times when the statutes of 
one era, enacted, it may be, in a moment of strong 
reaction, or under the stress of supposed dangers, 
may seem unduly to coerce the liberty of the sub- 
ject. But short of the tyranny of laws so cruel 
in their operation as to be an outrage upon con- 
science, or life, or property, it does not follow 
from such a condition of things that the best way 
out of it is by the systematic disregard and con- 
tempt of that which is enacted. A certain kind of 
liberty may be won in that way, but something 
infinitely more precious is lost in the process of 
obtaining it. Emancipation from inherited restric- 
tions, whether of belief or practice, may be a real 
gain, but where it is attained at the cost of all re- 
spect for authority and every habit of loyal affec- 
tion and obedience, then it is gained at a price 
which bankrupts him who pays it. 

And this is the price which we are in danger of 
being persuaded to pay for freedom in our gener- 
ation. I listen, and I seem to listen in vain, to 
catch, among all the noisiest prophets of the hour, 
some strain that shall remind us that we owe some 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

reverence to the Mother who bore us, and to whose 
principles it is due, under God, that we have 
planted the Church in this land. A quarter of a 
century ago it was common enough to hear Church- 
men derided for their idolatry of their own stand- 
ards of faith, their own modes of worship, and 
the like. The occasion for that sneer, if it ever 
existed, seems scarcely to exist to-day. There is 
hardly any Order, any Rite, any form of the 
Church's corporate life or work, that some one is 
not ready to disparage, if not to deride. In not 
a little of the criticism of the hour there is an 
undertone of contempt for what is our own, which 
makes one wonder how those who can so write and 
speak have managed to put up with it at all. Men 
are willing to eat their Mother's bread, and then, 
in the face of the world, to disown the rule of her 
authority, and all the while to see in such a line 
of conduct nothing that is inconsistent with either 
a sense of honor or a spirit of loyalty. At a 
recent meeting of a Diocesan Conference in the 
foremost diocese of our mother Church, a speaker 
declared "that the more he became acquainted with 
the teaching of the early Church, the more he felt 
drawn towards those who had departed from the 
natural reading and the inherited interpretation of 
some of the rubrics. He knew they broke the 
law, but if they had not boldly done so, there 
would not have been the great progress . . . which 
had been made . . . since he entered the Ministry." 
If words such as these may pass, as they did when 
they were spoken, unchallenged, it is difficult to 
see why they may not be urged when they touch 

[*9 3 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

something more sacred than some persons account 
a rubric. And in fact they are. License con- 
cerning the usages of worship provokes a similar 
license in the teaching of the pulpit and the press, 
the outcome of which is very apt to be a temper 
in which one's private opinions are held to war- 
rant any and every departure from that which is 
the commonly received and accepted interpreta- 
tion of the Church's standards. 

And, therefore, just here, it is that that obli- 
gation to loyalty to which I have adverted really 
enters. I rejoice to believe that a great deal that 
is said and done and written in our day has, in its 
purpose and intention, no disloyalty to the Church 
and her standards whatsoever. Nay, I rejoice to 
believe that there are earnest men who think that, 
in departing from what is recognized and accepted 
as the limits of the Church's teaching and practice, 
they are, in fact, approaching more nearly to that 
which ought to be accepted and recognized as the 
truth. But, at this point, there enter those asso- 
ciated obligations which are part of the compact 
whereby any individual is admitted into a fellow- 
ship and clothed, it may be, with privileges and 
dignities which he could not enjoy without it. 
These are not conferred upon him unconditionally. 
So far as they are those of men in Holy Orders, 
they are qualified by very definite obligations — - 
obligations which cannot be disregarded or lightly 
construed, without, I maintain, sooner or later 
weakening all sense of moral obligation. From 
first to last, they appeal to that noble instinct in 
every noble nature which we call the instinct of 

[3°] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

loyalty, which makes us true to a friend, true to a 
cause, true to a leader, not because we reckon 
them to be infallible, but because we hold that, 
before self, we must put that other to whom we 
have given our pledge, that cause to which we have 
made our vow, that glorious fellowship to which 
we have sworn allegiance. 

And here, therefore, unless I am mistaken, is 
our most hopeful pathway out of our present dif- 
ficulties. Not more law, but more loyalty , that is 
what we want. 1 have no words of contempt for 
honest criticism, whether new or old, and I recog- 
nize that no institution, however divine its origin, 
which is intrusted to human hands for its promul- 
gation, can be above the candid judgments of men, 
or the expression of them. But in an age of crit- 
icism so daring and so flippant that all things 
sacred are in danger of being reduced to one com- 
mon level with things transient and secular, it has 
become time to remember that a habit of criticism 
may issue at length in the death of all enthusiasm 
and in the destruction of all loyalty. No cause 
has any prospect of success whose professed ad- 
herents are chiefly employed in picking flaws in 
its spiritual pedigree, or making a mock at the 
garments in which it clothes itself. We complain, 
brethren of the clergy, that the laity, who are after 
all, let us remember, the main body of the Church, 
do not sufficiently believe in it to give their time 
to its interests, or their means to its extension. 
But may it not be possible that if they saw in us, 
"the Bishops and other Clergy," an ardor in its 
service so absorbing and enkindling that we had 

[3'] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

scant leisure to hunt for defects, to criticise or to 
reform usages, they might be drawn nearer to us 
in those common endeavors for the common end, 
out of which would come, sooner or later, not by 
litigation or lawlessness, but rather by common 
consent, all needed changes and reforms ? Believe 
me, men are sick and tired of that enormous ego- 
tism of which happily the Church is at any rate 
relatively so largely free, which treats all the past, 
all institutions, all sacred books, all constituted 
authority, all venerable usage, as if it were so much 
musty impertinence ; and if we would give to the 
sons and daughters of the Church to-day one 
great and glad surprise, I believe we could do it 
in no other way so effectually as by saying : " We 
will remember the Fifth Commandment, and 
honor and obey our dear Mother the Church loy- 
ally. We will cherish the Prayer-Book, and do 
its bidding — until we get a better one. We will 
make the best and not the worst of our Bishops 
and other chief Ministers ; we will build up and 
not pull down our brother's work, or, if we must 
needs rebuke, we will do it with love and not 
with envenomed innuendo ; we will, in one word, 
cultivate a vision which strives to see the whole 
Church rather than a part, and whose animating 
spirit is one which loses and is content to lose it- 
self in the cause to which it is pledged ; but which, 
while forgetting itself, can yet declare, If I forget 
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my 
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." 1 
1 Psalm cxxxvii. 5, 6, Prayer-Book Version. 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

It may be said, however, at this point: "Yes, 
all this is very well as the language of sentiment, 
but is it not after all a trifle vague and emotional? 
Surely there are defects in the Church's legisla- 
tion which need mending, and imperfections in 
her system of discipline which demand reform. 
How are you to right these, except by constitu- 
tional and canonical prescription ? And if con- 
stitutional and canonical prescription linger on the 
way, what is there left but individual license, if 
you choose to call it so, — which, like that wild 
cry of the sailor when, during the reign of Pope 
Sixtus V, the Egyptian obelisk was erected in the 
square of St. Peter's at Rome, at one and the 
same moment breaks an edict and flashes upon 
torpid minds the higher law that overrides it?" 

To that question there are, I take it, two an- 
swers which have much to do with the whole sub- 
ject we have been considering, and with which we 
may well draw this discussion to a close. 

In the first place, it must surely be admitted 
that, in order to warrant or excuse disregard of 
any law, its provisions ought to be so oppressive 
and intolerable as to violate the primary princi- 
ples of justice and righteousness. At the begin- 
ning of this century in England, according to the 
civil law, a man found disguised, and with a weapon 
upon his person, was adjudged guilty of felony, 
and, added the statute, "shall suffer death." 1 And 
when, in Parliament, Sir Samuel Romilly intro- 
duced a bill to repeal the statute of William which 
made a theft in a shop to the amount of five shil- 

1 Act 9th George I, 

[33] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

lings punishable with death, the bill was defeated 
in the House of Lords by the votes, among others, 
of one Archbishop and six Bishops, a fact which 
might well make one distrust the instinct of jus- 
tice in the breast of an ecclesiastic if he did not 
remember how enormous, under certain circum- 
stances, is the power of a tradition. 

Now, in this instance, the law was happily prac- 
tically set at naught by the verdicts of juries which 
refused to convict under it, and the clever Eng- 
lish ecclesiastical dignitary, Canon Malcolm Mac- 
Coll, from whom I quote this incident, adds that 
" the correction or abrogation of bad laws has, in 
fact, generally been brought about by men who, 
for the sake of justice, have been brave enough to 
incur the risk and odium of lawlessness." 1 

Yes, but to what end? If one is to take the 
law, or the interpretation of it, into his own hands 
to right a great wrong, that is one thing ; if he is 
to do it to gratify an individual taste or preference, 
wholly regardless of the feelings or wishes of the 
great majority of his brethren, that is quite an- 
other. The writer whom I have just quoted else- 
where remarks: "I am as much opposed as any 
one can be to inconsiderate innovations and to 
the enforcement of an unwonted ritual on an 
unwilling congregation. But I am an advocate of 
the widest possible latitude when the incumbent 
and his people are of one mind." 2 So am I, but 
it is well to ask oneself, just here, what is "the 
widest possible latitude," and how far such a rule 

1 Lawlessness, Sacerdotalism, and Ritualism, p. 9. 

2 Lawlessness, Sacerdotalism, and Ritualism, pp, 471, 472, 

[34] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

is to apply where the latitude is not alone one of 
doctrine taught by usage, but of doctrine taught 
from the pulpit. Is it sufficient that a pastor and 
his flock are of one mind as to their rejection of 
the language of the Second Article, in order to 
warrant a denial on the part of the former of the 
Church's doctrine of the Incarnation? Is there 
not, in other words, all along from the beginning 
to the end of things credenda, or things agenda, an 
obligation to the whole body of the Church, whose 
children we are, which must forever condition 
and qualify our personal liberty as Ministers or 
members of any particular flock? The contrary 
view seems to be a part of that vicious parochial- 
ism which, in the Church, is a doctrine of State 
Rights pushed to its most dangerous extreme. 
In the Greek Church every parish priest is a 
Pope, a Papa, and it is not without significance, 
surely, that such a Communion, however much 
or little such parochial individualism may stand 
for, is of all others to-day apparently most desti- 
tute of aggressive or out populating power. 

In a word, in order to the unity and due order 
and aggressive efficiency of the Church, we want 
a loyalty to the whole living body which is larger 
in its spirit and vision than the limits of any one 
parish or any one diocese. We want to consider 
what will promote the peace and order and prog- 
ress of the whole fellowship, not in view of the 
emergencies of any other age, but of our own. 
We want to recognize the theological distractions, 
the wide-spread unbelief, the aching weariness 
with everlasting debate and denial of all things 

[35] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

sacred and supersensuous, that hungers, I think, 
almost as never before for some clear, calm voice 
to speak to it in love, and yet to speak to it with 
authority; and then to ask ourselves what is 
wanting to make the voice of the Church, as she 
brings to men the story of her Lord's compassion, 
such a voice to-day ? Before God, I believe it to 
be such a melting and running together of all 
hearts in one common instinct of loyal devotion 
that, instead of having every man a "psalm, a 
doctrine, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation" 
of his own, we shall all " with one mind and with 
one mouth profess the faith once for all delivered/ ' 
But, once more, if we are to right existing 
wrongs, if wrongs there be, if we are to heal exist- 
ing defects in the Church's legislative and admin- 
istrative system, we want not only unity of purpose 
and temper, and, above all, loyalty to the whole 
body, rather than more and more complicated 
law-making, but also a return to the primitive 
conceptions and relations of the Episcopate. Amid 
all the ramifications of that somewhat heteroge- 
neous volume which we know as our Digest of 
Canons, it is not easy to find any provision for 
that practical administration of Episcopal authority 
which, as the most elementary knowledge of 
ecclesiastical history shows us, originally associated 
with the Bishop, his Presbyters, and which made 
his judgments theirs as well. At the basis of the 
Church-idea lies the family-idea, and the norm or 
type of the one is largely that of the other. In 
this country, it is true, we have happily returned 
far more nearly to the primitive forms of Church 

[36] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

government than is the case elsewhere, for there 
can be no doubt that " unquestioning submission 
to the sic volo, sic jubeo of a Bishop was never a 
maxim in any part of the Catholic Church, till 
Ultramontanism established Papal absolutism on 
the ruins of the ancient constitutional system. 
In the Arian and other troubles, the second order 
of the clergy, and sometimes the faithful laity," as 
the authority to which I have already referred 
points oilt, 1 " had frequently to defend the Faith, 
not only without, but against their Bishops." " Of 
course," as John Henry Newman says, in his 
Arians of the Fourth Century? " there were great 
and illustrious exceptions," but we, whose it is to 
be thankful for the heritage left to us by those 
wise men who determined the lines of our Ameri- 
can conciliar and legislative system, must needs 
own the force of Newman's words when he re- 
minds us that more than once in the history of 
the Christian Church there have been times when 
" the governing body came short, and when in the 
obstinate championship of Catholic truth, the 
governed rather were pre-eminent in faith, zeal, 
courage and constancy." 3 

We have, I say, great reason to be thankful 
that this is so — that at least in the enactment of 
our Canons the Laity and the Clergy are asso- 
ciated with the Bishops, and that, in the adminis- 
tration of his jurisdiction, each Diocesan Bishop 
has available for his needs, in especial emergen- 
cies, a Standing Committee composed of both 

1 MacColl: Six Letters, pp. 465-466. 

2 P. 454, third (Eng.) edition. 3 Ibid. 

[37] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



Clergymen and Laymen. But our Standing Com- 
mittees and our Diocesan and General Conven- 
tions are largely taken up with routine work, often 
of an urgent and engrossing nature, and if it were 
possible to invoke their aid in disciplinary mat- 
ters, it would not always be easy, with due regard 
to other interests with which these various bodies 
are charged, to secure it ; so that practically to 
obey the injunction of Jerome, that the Bishop 
shall do nothing without his Presbyters, becomes 
no easy matter. For myself, I believe that obli- 
gation to be a reciprocal one, and to be rightly 
qualified by the rule of St. Ignatius, that the 
Priests must do nothing without the Bishop ; but 
if this be so, and especially if we are to have re- 
gard to the Thirty-third Canon of the Apostles, 
which rules that the Bishop is to do nothing with- 
out the will of all his clergy , concerning which an 
Anglican divine, in a recent work on the Institutes 
of Canon Law, remarks that "where a Bishop 
enjoins anything that is of a dubious character, 
unsupported by the general voice of his Clergy, he 
acts on lines unknown to the primitive Church," 1 
then, surely, there ought to be some provision for 
unreserved conference between the Bishop and the 
Clergy, or, if the Diocese be too large for this, 
then the Bishop with the Clergy of an Archdea- 
conry, where one accused, if such unhappily there 
be, of error in doctrine, or viciousness of life, may 
be heard, first of all, at any rate, before his breth- 
ren of the ministry; — where there may be oppor- 
tunity for explanation and interrogation, where 
1 Owen : Institutes of Canon Law, p. 54. 

[38] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

questions affecting the honor and welfare of the 
Church may be submitted to some other and 
worthier test than the often envenomed tongue of 
rumor, and where the often intolerable injustice 
of our modern trial by newspaper may be at least 
qualified by that fraternal candor which, if it were 
more largely cultivated, would heal so many dif- 
ferences, correct misjudgments, gently restrain 
unreasoning waywardness and self-will, and draw 
together, instead of isolating, those who, as mem- 
bers of one household of faith, are charged with 
the good conduct and the good name of one 
another and of the whole Body. 

Of course such joint counsel and action in this, 
as in any other relation, must mainly depend for 
their efficacy upon mutual and manly confidence 
and consideration. But are these unattainable, 
and is it impossible for a Bishop and his Presby- 
ters so to confer and act together, under the sim- 
plest and most informal provisions, that not only 
shall more and more intricate legislation be ren- 
dered unnecessary, but the peace and good order 
of the Church be enduringly promoted ? For 
one, I do not believe it. 

But to this end, finally, one thing is indispen- 
sably necessary. On a recent occasion, when some 
of those whom I address this morning were pres- 
ent, I recalled a passage from that last of the 
Western fathers, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which 
I may venture to repeat here. "In the scheme 
for realizing the ideal Christian life, which was 
formed by St. Benedict of Monte Casino, and 
which became a rule for his followers in the mon- 

[39] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

asteries of the West, the virtue of humility," says 
a recent preacher before the University of Oxford, 1 
" was made the basis upon which the Christian 
character should be built. It had twelve forms or 
grades, some of them touching the holiest rela- 
tions of the soul to God, and others forming mere 
rules of Christian etiquette for the cloister, but all 
of them falling within the sphere of conduct. But 
St. Bernard, in commenting six centuries after- 
wards upon this part of the Benedictine rule, sets 
aside almost altogether the forms which humility 
assumes within the sphere of conduct, and deals 
with it as a virtue of the intellect." 

Surely, dear brethren, there is in this aspect of 
it a large place in our modern life for this Chris- 
tian virtue of humility. Is any one of us pre- 
pared to claim for himself the gift of an infallible 
judgment? In the domain of theology, must not 
the most learned among us echo those words of 
the Apostle, " For we know in part, and we pro- 
phesy in part "? 2 Is it necessary, in order to vin- 
dicate our own learning, to maintain that the 
Church, whether in our fathers' day or in our 
own, has gone barren of all wisdom? Is not hu- 
mility an attitude of the mind which, looking at 
something vaster than ourselves, recognizes our 
own littleness? And are not the Holy Scriptures 
in the exhaustless wealth of their divine revelation ; 
is not the voice of God speaking through all the 
ages in the lives and teachings of the saints and 
doctors of His militant Body; are not the clear 

1 The Vice- Principal of St. Mary's Hall. 

2 i Cor. xiii. 9. 

[40] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

testimonies of Apostles and martyrs, who counted 
not their lives dear unto themselves that we might 
possess the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us 
free — are not all these vaster and mightier, in the 
force of their witness to that truth with which we 
have been intrusted, than that which any single 
intellect among us, even the loftiest, can bring to 
bear upon it? It is an age of self-will in which we 
are living. Let us take care that the fumes of 
that intoxication which benumbs in men all sense 
of reverence, and so by a very sure law every 
instinct of loyalty, whether to constituted authority 
in the Church or in the state, do not bewilder us. 
There have been times when there was stern need 
of protest against ecclesiastical tyranny, episcopal 
insolence, inquisitorial dogmatism. But to say 
that such times are our times is to assert something 
which is not borne out by the facts. There may 
be individual instances where official action is hasty 
and harsh and unjust; but, in the fierce glare of 
modern criticism of all things, sacred as well as 
secular, such things, in our own communion at any 
rate, are so rare as to be almost phenomenal. 

Our danger is of quite a different kind. It is 
the danger of so disparaging all rule and order, of 
so disesteeming the subordination of the individ- 
ual to the welfare and good order of the whole, 
that the law itself becomes a jest, and the instinct 
of loyalty a vanished tradition. 

May God therefore send us, both rulers and 
ruled, the grace of humility, and then by means of 
it the spirit of loyalty to God and His Church and 
her laws. A great opportunity, so others than 
[4i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

they of our own household of faith declare to us, 
is to-day awaiting us. Let us not fling it away 
because we are too self-sufficient to improve it ! 
And since we cannot hope to know how truly to 
be loyal to the cause which has been committed to 
us, until first of all we have learned how to be 
loyal to Him who is its Head, let us see in all the 
perplexities of the hour a call to turn back and 
renew our allegiance to Him whose voice kindled 
the cowardice of recreant Peter into courage, and 
whose touch from that hour on to this has been 
the one spell that has made men strong enough to 
do God's will, and, if need be, to die for God's 
truth. The air is full of voices bidding men 
into all sorts of human brotherhoods, unions, and 
fellowships for mutual advantage and common 
aggression and defence. And all the while there 
is one brotherhood ordained of Him who is its 
founder to be mightier and more enduring than all 
the rest. To-day as we draw near to yonder sac- 
rament we proclaim our faith in Him who has 
founded it, and our fellowship in His life and 
love. His then be the spirit in which we serve 
His Church, that so, "the whole body fitly joined 
together and compacted by that which every joint 
supplieth, may increase, unto the edifying of itself 
in love, and thus grow up into Him in all things, 
which is the Head, even Christ." 1 

1 Eph. iv. 15, 16. 



[4*] 



THE OFFICES OF WARDEN 
AND VESTRYMAN 



TRIENNIAL CHARGE 
DELIVERED TO THE CLERGY AND 
LAITY OF THE DIOCESE OF NEW 
YORK SEPTEMBER 24, 1890 



THE OFFICES OF WARDEN AND 
VESTRYMAN 



Brethren of the Clergy and Laity : 

IT is deemed proper," is the language of the IXth 
Section of Canon 1 5 of Title I of the Digest of 
our General Canons, " that every Bishop of this 
Church shall deliver, at least once in three years, 
a charge to the Clergy of his Diocese, unless pre- 
vented by reasonable cause/' I have never been 
able to secure from my seniors in the episcopal 
office a definition in this connection of the phrase, 
" a reasonable cause." But while the unceasing 
pressure of administrative and executive work may 
not unjustly be regarded as one of them, it can 
not wholly excuse the Ordinary from at least an 
approximation to compliance with a requirement 
which so obviously rests upon the graver obliga- 
tions of his consecration vows. 

And this the more when one aspect of our com- 
mon work demands especial consideration, and 
when it is one which, so far as I know, has not 
thus far formed the subject of episcopal charges. 
These, as a rule, are apt to deal with the office and 
duties of the ministry, with questions of doctrine 
or polity, or with the relations of the Church, and 
more especially her clergy, to the manifold prob- 

[45] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

lems which challenge the priesthood, and confront 
the modern pulpit. 

But the clergy are but a part of the Church 
Militant, and their duties, or any most exhaustive 
definitions of them, do not comprehend those 
other obligations, no less real and definite, which 
rest, not upon the clergy, but the laity. From 
one point of view there is indeed much to be noted 
in this connection which is of equal import and 
encouragement. In forms largely unknown, it is 
true, to our fathers, and unrecognizable, if indeed 
they existed at all, in earlier ages of the Church, 
the laity of our time have illustrated an activity 
and discovered a capacity for manifold and most 
efficient service which has in it the largest promise 
for the Church's future. Laymen and laywomen, 
bound by no special vows or obligations to serve 
the Church and set forward her endeavors for 
Christ, have, nevertheless, with a ready and self- 
sacrificing devotion which is worthy of the high- 
est praise, attempted and accomplished some of 
the best work which the Church in any period of 
her existence has done. A review of the way in 
which these long-neglected aptitudes have been 
called into play, and have achieved their aims, 
would be one of the most interesting and inspiring 
chapters in ecclesiastical history. 

But I may not attempt it here, nor, indeed, is 
it with that aspect of the relation of the laity to 
the Church's life and work that I am now espe- 
cially concerned. There is a feature of the Church 
as an organized entity which is peculiar to the 
Anglican Communion, and which, in our own 

[46] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

ecclesiastical history, has borne, as it always must 
bear, a very important part in the progress and 
upbuilding of parishes, and through these the 
strengthening and enlargement of the Kingdom of 
Christ. It is true that the importance of this 
feature of our organization has come to be widely 
under-estimated, and that singularly enough not 
alone by those who are disposed to be jealous of 
its powers, but by those, also, who are clothed 
with these powers ; and yet I think that it must 
upon a little reflection be plain to every candid 
mind that the vestry of a parish has as integral, 
and in many ways as potential, a part in determin- 
ing its policy and in promoting its welfare as any 
other, whether bishop, priest, or deacon, who is 
concerned in the life of the parish, and that the 
definition therefore of its powers, and above all the 
recognition of its responsibilities, is as important 
a matter as almost any other with which you and 
I in this relation have to concern ourselves. 

I propose, therefore, to speak to you this morn- 
ing of the " Offices of Warden and Vestryman," 
of their dignity, their duties, and their opportuni- 
ties, and of the relation of these to that larger life 
of the Church of which our parochial system is a 
part. 

The first and freshest days of the Church illus- 
trate the early recognition of the principle of a di- 
vision of labor; and their history, if honestly dealt 
with, dismisses at once and forever the pretence 
that the government of the Church and the ad- 
ministration of its affairs were originally vested 
in any particular caste, or class, or order, to the 

[47] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

exclusion of any and all others. The late learned 
Bishop of Edinburgh, Dr. Cotterill, dear to some 
of us here who remember gratefully his inspiring 
visit to our American Church, has in his admirable 
work, The Genesis of the Churchy drawn an in- 
teresting analogy between the constitution of the 
ancient Agora, as described in Homer, and the de- 
velopment of the Church's organized life in Apos- 
tolic times; and having in mind the Council of 
the Apostles and brethren as described in the 
XVth chapter of the book of the Acts, has pointed 
out, as Mr. Gladstone has also shown in his Ju- 
ventus Mundi* how, as in the primitive Agora, 
there was the acclamation of the people as well as 
the decision of the nobles, so in the very first of 
the Church's General Councils there was the ex- 
pressed concurrence of the laity as well as the 
judgment of the Apostles and presbyters, so that 
when a decision was reached it was the "joint 
decision of the Apostles and presbyters and of 
the whole Church." 3 

In such a fact we have the germ of the whole 
principle, that under due authority, and in accord- 
ance with the primitive example, the laity were to 
have a definite place and part in the determination 
of the Church's policy and in the discharge of her 
various functions for the guardianship of her own 
interests and the extension of her work among men. 

It is true that as time went on this recognition 
of the place of the lay element in the Church's life 

1 W. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1872. 

2 See chap. xi. on the Polity of the Homeric Age. 

3 The Genesis of the Church, pp. 378-81. 

[48] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

and work grew less and less distinct, until it may 
be said to have well-nigh disappeared altogether. 
The usurpation of ecclesiastical power which illus- 
trated itself preeminently and most insolently in 
the unscriptural and unapostolic claims of the 
Bishop of Rome, may be said, so far as the rest 
of the clergy of whatever order and degree were 
concerned, to have illustrated itself all along the 
whole line, until the time came when, alike from 
the councils of the Church and the conduct of her 
affairs, the laity were wholly excluded. And yet 
it is interesting to note that one of those offices of 
which more particularly I am now to speak, and 
which, with the other, most of us are wont to as- 
sociate with no earlier date in ecclesiastical history 
than the Reformation period, — I mean the office 
of Warden, in the sense of a person charged with 
certain temporalities in connection with due pro- 
vision for the worship of the Church, — it is 
interesting, I say, to note that this office dates, as 
shown by very eminent authority, from the latter 
part of the Middle Ages, 1 while Synodsmen, or as 
the name afterward came to be corrupted, " Sides- 
men," are of much more ancient date, being 
derived from the custom observed at Episcopal 
Synods of calling upon certain grave laymen of 
the diocese to report on oath to the bishop as to 
its moral condition. 2 

And herein we have a most valuable contribu- 
tion towards determining one of those questions 
which I have already raised in connection with the 

1 See Ayliffe's Parergon, p. 516. 

2 See the Law of the Church, under Church Warden. 

[49] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

matter of a just definition of the offices of warden 
and vestryman. In other words, the office of 
warden, and in a lesser degree the office of vestry- 
man, since under our Canons the vestryman in 
the absence or failure of the warden may justly be 
called upon to perform his duties, are not alone 
purely secular offices, but offices involving obliga- 
tions no less of a much higher class and of most 
serious import. And all this comes out more 
clearly just in proportion as we trace more care- 
fully what I may call the evolution of these offices. 
When the time came that in the good providence 
of God the various disabilities of the laity in con- 
nection with the administration of the affairs of 
the Church were removed, the old post-mediaeval 
office of warden, as a guardian or custodian of 
certain sacred things, passed over from the nomi- 
nation of the clergy into an election by the people. 
These were assembled annually, the inhabitants of 
each parish in its vestry, and so the annual meet- 
ing of the people constituted its vestry, the body 
taking its name from the place in which originally 
it had been wont to meet, and this meeting chose 
ordinarily the two wardens. I may not tarry here 
to trace in detail the further evolution by which, 
in the terms of the English law, what was termed 
the Select Vestry came into existence further than 
to remark that the subdivision of parishes, and the 
greater convenience of a smaller body for the pur- 
poses of ordinary administration, led to the enact- 
ment of a statute providing for the appointment, 
annually, of wardens, and a limited number of ves- 
trymen, with power to act for the larger vestry, or, 

[5°] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

in other words, the parishioners. This statute be- 
longs to the reign of Queen Anne, and may be 
said to have been the norm on which our earlier 
ecclesiastical legislation formed itself. It was sub- 
sequently somewhat modified in its operation by 
an act adopted in the year a.d. 1831, popularly 
called, from its author, the Hobhouse Act, 1 in 
which it is especially noteworthy that the provision 
for securing rotation in the office of vestrymen, a 
conspicuous feature in the admirable Canon already 
reported to this Convention by its able committee 
on the amendment of the Act for the Incorpora- 
tion of Churches, is included. And thus our law, 
so far as its definitions go, practically runs parallel 
with that of our mother Church of England. 

So far, I say, as its definitions go. But on 
turning to the Canons of the Church of England, 
on the subject of the office and functions of war- 
dens and vestrymen, we find that, whereas the 
definition of those powers in those Canons is in 
many respects full and precise, in our own it is 
most scanty and meagre. There is, as I have 
elsewhere had occasion to show, 2 an explanation to 
be found for this in the circumstances under which 
the independent existence of our branch of the 
Anglican Communion as a national Church be- 
gan. The English Canons, as I shall presently 
have occasion to point out, made in some particu- 
lars no slight demands upon those who were to 

1 1 1 2 William R. 4, c. 60. 

2 See address delivered in the Chapel of Lambeth Palace, 
Feb. 4, 1887, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary 
of the consecration of the first Bishop of New York. 

[5'] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

bear office as wardens and vestrymen, while, on the 
other hand, the close of the last century and the 
beginning of this was a particularly unfavorable 
time to look for the realization of any very high 
ideal, whether of personal or official service in the 
Church. " If you see a clergyman of my time of 
life," said the Rev. Sydney Smith to a lay contem- 
porary, " you may be tolerably sure that you see 
a bad clergyman," and the statement was only too 
painfully applicable to what has, with a pungent 
felicity, been called the Georgian period of the 
Church's life on both sides of the Atlantic. As a 
consequence it was antecedently improbable that 
our earlier legislation should demand of wardens 
and vestrymen anything beyond the baldest dis- 
charge of certain purely secular functions, and, in 
fact, they did not. 

But at this point it is to be borne in mind that 
our own Church has consistently affirmed one prin- 
ciple in regard to the laws and usages of our 
mother, the Church of England, that principle so 
admirably stated by one never to be named in this 
convention without sentiments of affectionate ven- 
eration for his memory — I mean the late Judge 
Hoffman. Says that eminent authority in matters 
of ecclesiastical law, speaking of our colonial 
Church: 1 "The law which prevailed in the Church 
of England formed the law for the members of that 
Church in every colony of England. They who 
were members of that Church brought with them, 
and [when] they joined it in a colony adopted, the 
doctrine and discipline of the English Church. 

1 Hoffman : Ritual Law of the Churchy pp. 35, 36. 
[5*] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

"We do not mean," he adds, "that such Church 
is an Establishment, with the Statutes of Uni- 
formity as relieved by the Statutes of Toleration, 
governed in the colonies. But our proposition is 
that all the members of the Church of England 
in the colonies were controlled by the [ritual] law 
of the Church of England, except in cases when 
it was plainly inapplicable." 

It may be urged, indeed, that the action of this 
Church, as referred to in the preface of its Book 
of Common Prayer, changes all this, and that as 
an autonomous body it had and has no concern 
with any ecclesiastical legislation which may have 
been enacted by another Church, whether we 
choose to describe her as a sister or a mother 
Church. But I think that, quite apart from graver 
and more fundamental considerations which have 
to do with that law of " historical continuity" of 
which we have lately heard so much, there is an- 
other testimony to which in this connection refer- 
ence may not inappropriately be made. In the 
General Convention of the year a.d. 1814, the 
House of Bishops and the House of Deputies 
united in the following declaration: "It having 
been credibly stated to the House of Bishops 
that on questions in reference to property devised 
before the Revolution to congregations belonging 
to the Church of England, and to uses connected 
with the same, some doubts have been entertained in 
regard to the body to which the two names have been 
applied, the House thinks it expedient to make 
the Declaration, — That the Protestant Episcopal 
Church is the same body heretofore known in these 

[53] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



States by the name of the Church of England, the 
change of name, although not of religious prin- 
ciple, in doctrine or in worship or in discipline, 
being induced by a characteristic in the Church of 
England supposing the independence of Christian 
Churches under the different sovereignties to which 
their allegiance in civil concerns belongs. But that 
when the severance alluded to took place, and ever 
since, she conceived herself as professing and acting 
upon the principles of the Church of England, is 
evident from the organization of our Conventions, 
and from their subsequent proceedings." 1 

In referring to this Declaration, I am not un- 
mindful of the familiar challenge to which such 
Declarations have been subjected, and I recog- 
nize, unreservedly, that they have no canonical 
authority. But if not of force as law, they are 
certainly of use as interpreters of law, and if not 
in the highest sense, they must yet be regarded as 
in some sense the godly judgment of the fathers 
of the Church, reinforced by the concurrence of 
the laity as expressed through their Deputies in 
General Convention assembled. And so it would 
seem as if in asking what are the duties and 
responsibilities of wardens and vestries we have 
abundant warrant for turning to the Canons of 
the Church of England as in force during the 
pre-revolutionary period, and as no less, it may 
be remarked by the way, in force in that branch 
of the Church Catholic to-day, for such light as 
may enable us to answer the question. 

1 Journal of the General Convention 0/1814, p. 431, Perry's 
reprint. 

[54] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

That light is not wanting. On the contrary, 
no one can review the canons of that venerable 
Communion to which we owe so much, so far as 
those canons relate to the obligations of wardens 
and vestrymen, without recognizing that they lift 
these offices to a far higher level of dignity and 
responsibility than we are ordinarily wont to asso- 
ciate with them, and that they were intended to 
carry with them various and manifold opportuni- 
ties for promoting the best good of the Church 
and enlarging the circle of her influence. 

The limits of this hour forbid my undertaking 
to show this in detail. But a careful examination 
of these ancient canons of the offices and func- 
tions of wardens and vestrymen reveal the fact 
that they cover three departments of service re- 
lating to their duties : 

(a) As custodians of property : (b) As guardians 
of public worship: (c) As witnesses and exemplars 
of faith and conduct. 

(a) The first of these departments of service is, 
at any rate theoretically, recognized among our- 
selves. It is sufficiently understood, and I am 
glad to bear witness that ordinarily it is cheer- 
fully acknowledged, that the wardens and vestry 
may justly be looked to for such ordinary vigil- 
ance in regard to the property of the Church as 
is involved in keeping the church edifice in decent 
repair, in duly attending to the matters of insur- 
ance, the collection of pew-rents and the like, and 
in such provision as may be necessary for the com- 
fort and decorum of public worship. But I could 
wish that, even in these particulars, the law and 

[55] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

usage of our fathers prevailed among ourselves, 
and that at a stated time, at least once a year, the 
wardens or a committee of the vestry might meet 
the bishop, or an archdeacon acting for him, if 
not for a perambulation of the parish, at least for 
such an examination of the church edifice, the 
parish school, and the rectory as shall assist in 
securing a due attention from those by whom it 
is owed to the property held in trust by the vestry 
for the use and benefit of the Church; and am I 
over-critical on this point if I say that it has some- 
times been my lot year after year to take note of 
minor neglects in this regard — a stained wall, a 
broken window, a shabby and neglected carpet, 
which have been in unpleasant contrast with the 
smartness and costliness within the same parochial 
limits of the adornments of private houses? It 
may be said that these are not times when the 
attention of the laity needs to be directed to mat- 
ters of ecclesiastical adornment, and that there 
are those, both among clergy and laity, who may 
be abundantly trusted for adequate care and 
expenditure in that direction. I am not now, how- 
ever, pleading for ornamentation, but for whole- 
ness, cleanliness, reverence. A discolored wall, a 
broken railing, neglected fences and approaches, 
these tell a story of love grown cold to every pass- 
er-by more eloquent than any words. I am sin- 
cerely grateful for the guilds and societies that 
have in many of these particulars come to the 
assistance of the clergy, but there can be no doubt 
as to where the first responsibility for such matters 
actually rests, and I hope that it will be cordially 

[56] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

recognized. Of course I am not unmindful that 
one cannot make bricks without straw, and that 
where there are scanty means and a small and 
feeble flock it is not always easy to provide for 
even the bare necessities of public worship. But 
even in such cases the work is too often left to the 
clergy, and I confess that one of the gravest dan- 
gers of our Church and day seems to be that, in 
this particular, duties of oversight, duties of thrift 
and forecast, the raising of money, above all the 
giving of personal time and service in purely 
secular things, are left to those of whom, though 
of another order, it was said in the beginning that 
it was "not meet that they should leave the Word 
of God and serve tables." 1 In the magnificent 
minster at Ely, nothing is more impressive nor 
resplendent than the superb decoration in color of 
the ceiling, and nothing it would seem ought to 
make the heart of a devout lay man thrill with 
more grateful pride than to learn that all this 
costly and beautiful work was the gift of one of 
his own order, the late Mr. Gambier Parry, and, 
what just here is much more to the point, was 
done with his own hand. In a generation when, 
if we have found it convenient to dismiss the doc- 
trine of a Vicarious Atonement from our theology, 
we have managed to enthrone the practice of a 
vicarious service over a good deal of our daily life 
— -when, in other words, we are planning and 
arranging how we can do as little as possible our- 
selves and hire machinery or a clerk or a deputy 
of some sort to do it for us, it is much to be 
1 Acts, vi. 2. 

[57] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

desired that the Church, the building, its surround- 
ings, its belongings little and great might have 
something more of the personal care and atten- 
tion of those to whom its custody and preservation 
are formally and officially committed. 

And in this connection it is proper that I should 
allude to a kindred subject of a somewhat more 
delicate nature, but concerning which the time, I 
am persuaded, has come to speak with consider- 
able explicitness. The care of the temporalities 
of a parish includes the care and administration of 
its finances, however much these may be delegated 
to the hands of a treasurer or left to enjoy the 
often scanty and irregular attention of the minis- 
ter. In this domain there is not, or ought not to 
be, any more than in the conduct of the affairs of 
a bank or trust company, any room for action in- 
fluenced by sentiment, nor should any slackness 
or carelessness be tolerated or excused on the 
ground of what may be supposed to be due to 
courtesy to an officer or tenderness to the feelings 
of an individual. No clergyman or layman ought 
ever to consent, under any circumstances what- 
ever, to touch, or to become in any wise respon- 
sible for, the handling of money whose source and 
application he cannot show, if the need to do so 
shall arise, to the satisfaction of any reasonable and 
right-minded person. I affirm this as an axiom 
in ecclesiastical morals, and in doing so I do not 
at all forget the rights which are reserved to the 
Priest in the administration of the Communion 
alms, though I must own that, even under such 
circumstances, a clergyman may well beware of 

[58] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

the snare of " confidential funds." But leaving 
this exception aside, the general rule is one which 
I am persuaded is as widely applicable as it is 
widely disregarded. In the last General Conven- 
tion I introduced a proposed enactment on this 
subject, as an addition to § III of Canon 15 of 
Title I, which ran as follows : 

"The amount of other offerings received in 
connection with any service in any church or 
chapel shall be ascertained by the wardens, or two 
vestrymen, or two other persons appointed by the 
rector and wardens for that purpose, and the 
amount of the same shall, without delay, be en- 
tered in a book kept for such record, and certified 
to, in each case, by the two persons so appointed." 

The object of such a provision ought to be plain 
to everyone who hears it. It enables any one who 
is charged with the trusteeship of money to be 
used for Church purposes to exhibit such a record 
as leaves no room for the evil effects of careless- 
ness on the one hand or of malevolence on the 
other ; and it illustrates a careful scrupulousness 
in matters wherein the absence of such scrupu- 
lousness has been, though happily rarely, the oc- 
casion of painful scandals or misrepresentationsc 
It is perhaps a misfortune, though I am not so 
sure of that, that the subjects of a spiritual king- 
dom should have to do, even in connection with 
the maintenance of the most sacred offices of reli- 
gion, with transactions of a pecuniary or commer- 
cial character ; but since it must be so, surely the 
Church's buying and selling, her hiring and leas- 
ing, her ingatherings and her outgoings of this 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

nature, ought all to be conducted upon a plane 
not only above reproach, but above any just criti- 
cism. And in this connection ought I to refrain 
from saying that the just and honorable obligations 
of a vestry to him who ministers in holy things 
ought to be recognized and discharged with 
careful promptness and with chivalric honesty, 
unbiased by personal likes or dislikes, and unin- 
fluenced by disappointed expectations ? The cruel 
policy known as " starving out a rector " is, I am 
thankful to believe, most rare among us; but it is 
a policy which, in view of other modes provided 
for the relief of a disaffected people, no possible 
circumstances can justify or excuse. Here as else- 
where the duties of wardens and vestrymen in 
their stewardship of the temporalities of a parish 
are twofold, being not alone to the constituency 
by whom they have been chosen, but also to that 
minister of Christ in loyal subordination to whom 
they are called upon to discharge the duties of 
their office. 

Before leaving this branch of the subject, I 
desire to add a word as to the duty of wardens and 
vestrymen in regard to the adornment and enrich- 
ment of the church edifice. This is an age of 
memorials, and much of the furnishings and 
appurtenances of our holy places has to do with a 
beautiful sentiment which we may wisely cherish 
and indulge. I would that its forms and modes 
of expression were always equally beautiful ; but 
it must be owned that, not unfrequently, a very 
crude art and a very meretricious taste finds its 
way within the sanctuary rails, glares upon us from 

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OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

some brazen anomaly in pulpit or lectern, gleams 
with colors not at all "richly alight" through chan- 
cel and clear story windows, and in many ways 
reminds us that in sacred as in secular art the best 
intention and the worst achievement may come 
very close together. It ought to be distinctly 
recognized that no erection should be permitted 
in any consecrated building the design of which 
has not been submitted to, and approved by, the 
rector, wardens, and vestry, acting in vestry meet- 
ing, and under competent professional advice ; and 
it ought further to be borne in mind that such 
action ought not to be unduly biased by weakly 
amiable considerations having in view the mere 
gratification of individual feeling. The whole is 
greater than any part, and a church edifice should 
be, in its every aspect and detail, an education in all 
that is best, most fair, most real, and most meet. 

(b) But the churchwardens more particularly, 
and the vestry as sharing with them similar re- 
sponsibilities, are also guardians of public worship. 
Under those canonical provisions to which I have 
already referred, it is made the duty of the war- 
dens to suppress all light and unseemly behavior 
during Divine Service, and if need be to remove 
those who are guilty of it, and to aid in enforcing 
such other decent compliance with the usages of 
public worship as the canons of the Church pre- 
scribe. Of these the 18th Canon is the most 
important, and in an age not given to reverence it 
is well to recall those precise and comprehensive 
requirements which have had no small share in edu- 
cating our brethren of the Anglican Communion 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

in a reverent behavior in God's house, only too 
rare among ourselves. "No man," says the canon, 
" shall cover his head in the time of Divine Ser- 
vice," and " all manner of persons then present 
shall severally kneel upon their knees when the 
General Confession, Litany, and other prayers are 
read, and shall stand at the saying of the Belief 
according to the rules in that behalf prescribed in 
the Book of Common Prayer, and likewise, when 
in time of Divine Service the Lord Jesus shall be 
mentioned, due and lowly reverence shall be done 
by all persons present, as it has been accustomed, 
testifying by their outward gestures their inward 
humility, Christian resolution and due acknowl- 
edgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and 
eternal Son of God, is the only Saviour of the 
world. . . . And none, either man, woman or child, 
of what calling soever, shall be otherwise at such 
times busied in the Church than in quiet attend- 
ance to hear, mark and understand that which is 
read, preached or ministered, saying in their due 
places audibly " such parts of the service as are 
appointed to be said by the people. " Neither 
shall they disturb the service or sermon by walk- 
ing, or talking, or in any other way." The quaint 
prescriptions have verily a sound of a by-gone 
age, and of a discipline long ago fallen into large 
disuse. But it were well if, at least in those who 
bear office in the Church, they could find consis- 
tent illustrations among ourselves, and if not 
by precept and official enforcement, at least by 
example, they could be commended to our too 
often listless and irreverent congregations. 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

A still further requirement of the wardens and 
vestry, as guardians of public worship, is the duty, 
especially in the absence of the rector, of protect- 
ing the sanctuary and the pulpit from the profana- 
tion of unworthy and unauthorized ministers. 
The 5 2d Canon of 1603, whose provisions are 
partially reenacted in our own Canon 14 of Title 
I of the Digest, requires that " in order that the 
bishop may understand what sermons are made in 
his diocese and who presume to [minister or] 
preach without a licence, wardens and sidesmen 
shall see that the names of the [ministers] preach- 
ers which come to their church from any other 
place be noted in a book, wherein such person 
shall subscribe his name, the day when he offi- 
ciated, and the name of the bishop of whom he 
had licence to preach." In any case, I think it 
must be owned that such a rule would be a wise 
one, but in a diocese which contains the largest 
port of -entry on this continent, and which gathers 
the flotsam and jetsam, the waifs and strays, of the 
whole ecclesiastical world, I greatly wish it might 
be made imperative. And in this connection as, 
on other occasions, I have appealed to the clergy, 
so I would now invoke the vigilance and coopera- 
tion of my brethren of the laity to see to it that 
none of them who are wardens or vestrymen, and 
who may be temporarily charged with arrange- 
ments for the Church's services, are timid or care- 
less in a matter in which their vigilance is never a 
presumptuous interference, but simply a part of 
their bounden duty. You, with us, dear brethren, 
are charged by the Apostle to watch for the purity 

[63] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and good order of the Church, and those who are 
office-bearers within her fold may not disown their 
obligations. 

(c) And this brings me naturally and finally to 
speak of those of the laity who bear office in the 
Church as witnesses and exemplars of faith and 
conduct. In an opinion of Lord Stowell's, quoted 
in Lee's Reports/ he says: "I conceive their du- 
ties" (he is speaking of churchwardens) "were 
originally confined to the care of the ecclesiastical 
property of the parish, over which they exercise a 
discretionary power for certain purposes. In all 
other respects it is an office of observation and 
complaint." If one were disposed to be cynical, 
it might be said that, so far as the rector and the 
sexton and the choir are concerned, the average 
warden is not always slow to exercise his " office 
of complaint " and to supplement his lack of 
personal service by criticism or fault-finding with 
regard to that of others. But, in fact, the function 
which Lord Stowell had in mind was a most im- 
portant one, being none other than that which was 
anciently required of churchwardens as guardians, 
with the parish-priest, of the purity and good or- 
der of the flock. With this view the 1 16th of the 
Canons to which I refer makes it the duty of the 
wardens at the time of the annual visitation to 
present to the bishop or his representative any 
one who is an evil liver or a breaker of the laws 
of the Church, "that enquiry may be made there- 
into," and, says a high authority, " they are guilty 
of a breach of their oath whenever they omit it." 2 

1 Reports, 129. 2 Prideaux's Guide, p. 436. 

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OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

With us, as I need not remind you, neither 
vestrymen nor churchwardens take any oath of 
office, and the requirements thus referred to have 
long fallen into disuse even in our mother Church; 
but, as before, I think it of service to turn back 
to them and to recall a day when the conception 
of official duty extended so much farther and so 
much higher than our own, and to ask the ques- 
tion whether after all, in their essence and spirit, 
they have not something very pertinent to say to 
us? For what is the essential thing here but that 
the care and guardianship of the flock is not the 
exclusive charge of the ministry? No man in the 
household of the Church "liveth to himself or 
dieth to himself. Bear ye one another's burdens," 
for " ye are members one of another." Over and 
over again there rings through all the story of that 
first building time of the Christian Church the 
clear cry <c for ye are builded together in Christ 
Jesus " ; and in answer to the selfish challenge of 
the unbrotherly Cain, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " 
comes the answer of the Gospel written in the blood 
of its Founder, " Yes, you are ! and I am here in 
the world, in the Word and Sacraments of My 
Church, that you may never forget it!" Now, 
then, take this great and glorious truth and put it 
beside the life of the average parish anywhere in 
all the world. Here is. a lad nurtured in the Sun- 
day-school, singing in the choir, hastening daily 
to that dangerous borderland between the age of 
pupilage and the era of independent responsibility. 
He has found his way or been led by another 
into evil company, or his wayward nature has led 

[65] ' 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

him to begin a course of deception and dishonesty. 
His pastor and his parents equally are kept in 
careful ignorance of all this, but you know it, my 
brother, you warden, you vestryman, and what 
have you done about it? Have you ever said a 
word of affectionate warning to such an one your- 
self, or if you are too shy or too timid for that, 
have you ever dropped a hint — not a scandal- 
breeding and treacherous hint, but a friendly word 
of suggestion in some ear that you know is heark- 
ening with affectionate interest for everything that 
concerns that young life? There are multitudes 
of men to-day, hardened in sin and sunk in vice, 
whose cold hostility to the ministrations of the 
religion of their fathers is due, quite as much as 
anything, to this, that at some supreme moment 
of their lives when they took the wrong turn, and 
— never turned again: they can now say, "No 
man cared for my soul, no manly or brotherly 
word ever held me back, no outstretched hand ever 
strove to stay my wayward feet. There were men, 
and some of them young men little older than 
myself, but wiser, more experienced, and more 
trusted. Their friendship might have saved me : 
I do not say that it would, but at any rate I never 
had it." Men and brethren, the terrible element 
in such a cry as that is that it is but the prophecy 
of one that we may one day hear in tones that 
may haunt our ears as long as memory shall last ; 
and if at this point any one objects that all this is 
alien to that for which those offices of which I 
have been treating now exist, no matter for what, 
originally, they were created, then my answer is 

[66] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

that it ought not to be alien, and that, as a matter of 
fact, it can never be made, to any reflecting mind, 
to appear so. We may say as much as we please 
that a vestryman or a warden is a purely secular 
personage chosen for secular purposes. We may 
as well face the fact that, by every ordinary ob- 
server, they are taken as representative personages, 
standing somehow, whether we or they choose to 
admit it or no, as exemplars and illustrations of 
that divine thing which we call the Church of God 
in the world. The exigencies of a new commu- 
nity, the scanty numbers of some little flock, or 
some other perfectly valid reason may make it 
necessary that the corporation of a parish should 
include persons who are not communicants of the 
Church; but I cannot understand how this relaxa- 
tion should ever extend to unbaptized persons, nor 
can I comprehend how any one can hold such an 
office without recognizing its claim upon him for 
such exemplary living, such blameless manners, 
such sincere and willing service for the good of 
others, as even Pagan religions have been wont to 
exact from those who built their temples or guarded 
their treasures. Far better would it be in those 
cases where the customary number of vestrymen is 
so large as to make it all but impossible to find 
persons of suitable character and conduct to fill the 
office, that such parishes should take advantage of 
the wise provision of the statute which authorizes 
the reduction of their number, and be content with 
five or even three such officers, " all good men and 
true." 

It will thus be seen, my dear brethren, that the 

[67] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

relation of a warden and a vestryman, viewed in 
the light of its origin and history, is a fourfold re- 
lation, first to the minister, second to the congre- 
gation, third to the Ordinary, and fourth to the 
community. 

i. I should be sorry if it should be supposed 
that I did not entertain a sincere sympathy for 
those who have experience of the burdens and 
embarrassments of their office in any and all these 
relations, but I presume that if I should approach 
them in some moment of candor I should find 
that they regarded themselves especially entitled to 
such sympathy because of the perplexities and 
difficulties of the task. " I have broken in some 
dozen young rectors," said a venerable warden in 
my hearing, once, speaking of the reverend clergy 
as if they had been colts, "but the last one broke 
me." It was a homely and rustic figure, but it 
did not, I apprehend, speak alone the experience 
of the rustic mind. There is an inevitable friction 
which, under our vagrant system — or want of 
system — of pastorates, must be perpetually re- 
peated, which has cost the Church more peace and 
progress, and brought what ought to be a most 
beautiful relation to oftener disaster and sorrowful 
ending, than I would care to estimate. Youth, 
inexperience, a cloistered pedantry and self-confi- 
dence on the one hand, and an elderly but after 
all very circumscribed wisdom on the other, — 
beginning in a tactless dogmatism, and a very dis- 
proportionate assertion of authority in the one 
case, and in a somewhat discouraged and it may 
be rather cynical watchfulness for the inevitable 

[68] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

blunders of youth in the other, — these, like two 
vessels lashed together in a storm, have abraded 
each other's feelings, hardened each other's preju- 
dices, and issued too often in an armed neutrality 
which was not slow to irritate on the one side or 
to be obstructive on the other, both alike forget- 
ful, alas, all the while, Whose they were and 
Whom they professed to serve. 

I have on more than one occasion spoken 
plainly enough to my brethren who were about to 
be admitted to Holy Orders on this subject of 
their relation to their brethren of the laity who 
were office-bearers in the Church, and I must now 
be equally candid with those whom more especially 
I address to-day. If I were asked for three rules 
to govern one who holds office as warden or ves- 
tryman under any rector or minister, they would 
be — 

Do not expect too much at first. 
Cultivate kindly relations at whatever cost. 
Be loyal. 

The ministry has its treasure in earthen ves- 
sels, and its success in bringing that treasure forth 
is dependent, in a large proportion of cases, on the 
sympathy and encouragement that evokes it. But 
there is no one in Holy Orders whose gifts are so 
modest and whose aptitudes are so meagre that 
you and I, by judicious cooperation and by kindly 
encouragement, cannot make them greater. There 
are parishes in this diocese where it is a perpetual 
delight and refreshment to me to linger, because 
there is in them what I cannot better describe than 
a family feeling — the burdens and the triumphs, 

[69] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

the discouragements and the aspirations, all shared 
in common, and love gilding the whole with a 
radiance forever supremely its own. Instances of 
maladjustment there will be — the right man in 
the wrong place, and alas ! unfitness, and even un- 
worthiness, sometimes ; but even then a manly and 
brotherly tenderness can soften the inevitable 
wound, prudence and charity can cultivate a dis- 
creet reserve, equity can be kept from passing over 
into cruelty and Christ be not wounded in the 
house of His friends. 

And, on the other hand, where the pastoral 
relation is one of mutual confidence and regard, it 
is possible for those whose act has mainly created 
that relation, and who, next to the rector, are the 
official representatives of the parish, almost indefi- 
nitely to multiply a ministers efficiency. With- 
out flattery or affectation of partisanship, often a 
more evil thing in its effects in a parish than open 
hostility, a layman officially related to his rector 
may continually make him sensible how the cause 
of Christ and His Church is with both of them a 
common cause, and how sincerely the one, with 
the other, desires its truest prosperity. How 
many vestrymen, I wonder, are in Church on Sun- 
day afternoons? How many ever visit the Sun- 
day-school? How many in a country parish, if 
they cannot give their means, give a day's work to 
the church or the rectory? These are extremely 
homely questions, it may be objected, even in 
such a connection as this, but indeed, dear breth- 
ren, unless I am to leave the whole matter up in 
the air, they belong to the class of questions which 

[70] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

I am constrained to ask, and which you may well 
try, at least, to answer. 

2. But the offices of warden and vestryman in- 
volve a relation not only to the minister, but also 
to the congregation or parish. The modern par- 
ish is a much more complex organism than those 
of the olden time, even as our modern civilization 
has brought to the Church a great many tasks 
and problems which to our fathers were largely 
unknown. It is in vain that we attempt to evade 
them. An age without inherited reverence, hat- 
ing shams and pretenders, turns from the New 
Testament to the tragedy of human life, and asks 
of the Church of God, "What are you doing to 
ameliorate it? " And what, indeed, are we doing, 
and how much of what we might be doing if what 
ought to be the work of all were not left, largely, 
if not wholly, alike to the initiative and the activi- 
ties of the clergy ? I do not forget the noble in- 
crement of strength which of late has come to us 
in this diocese, especially from our younger laity, 
notably in many of our leading parishes. But it 
is significant that this is largely the service of those 
who do not bear office in the Church, and that 
they who do are not always even accurately in- 
formed of the good work which is done among 
them. In visiting the mission chapels of this city 
I have often been pained to observe the univer- 
sal absence of those, except the rector and the 
assistant minister, who are chiefly concerned in 
supporting them, and I do not wonder that my 
brethren of the clergy find the maintenance of 
such work difficult and discouraging, if they are 
[7i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



unable to interest even those who with themselves 
are officially responsible for it. 

If an office brings honor, those who hold it 
ought to be glad to remember that it brings also 
responsibility, and that honorable rank cannot be 
dissociated from honorable obligation. 

And for the discharge of this, even where oppor- 
tunities for personal service are wanting, there 
are yet abundant occasions. A consistent example 
during Divine Service and elsewhere, a habit of 
speech which is at once loyal and hopeful, and 
wisely reticent, these are things whereby a single 
layman may do much to bind together and build 
up a parish, and to strengthen the hands of him 
who is charged with the ministry of holy things. 
In the old days, as in some of our dioceses still, 
there was a rector's warden and a people's warden, 
and, in the highest sense, every officer in a parish 
ought to have an eye to both parties to whom he 
is related, and, in looking toward the people, one 
quick to see opportunities for good, and a hand 
quick to seize them. 

3. But again, under the provisions of our own 
canons, as you are aware, vestries, and especially 
wardens, sustain important relations to the Ordi- 
nary. As his assent, with that of the Standing 
Committee, is required to acts of a vestry in vari- 
ous stages of the history of a parish from the first 
steps of its organization, all the way along, in the 
matter of the administration or disposition of its 
property, so it is provided that action concerning 
rector or other minister in vacating a cure, and 
of a vestry in filling it, shall be communicated, 

i>] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

so soon as may be, to the bishop. The obliga- 
tions involved in these canonical provisions may of 
course be discharged in a purely formal way, and 
no more than this may technically be exacted. But 
I should be glad if, in differences or disagreements 
between pastor and people, in action determining, 
e. g., the migratory policy of a parish, and espe- 
cially in the matter of the calling of a minister, 
it might be borne in mind that something more 
than this may not only be conceded without the 
smallest sacrifice of such individual independence 
of action as is already secured under the law, but 
also to the mutual advantage of all parties con- 
cerned. A bishop is not unfrequently reproached 
for a policy in a parish or the presence in a cure 
of one of whose translation to it he has had no 
smallest knowledge, until the whole transaction is 
a thing accomplished. The case, let us say, is sim- 
ply one of maladjustment, of excellent gifts and 
an excellent purpose in the wrong place. It is a 
case, and there are a great many of them, where an 
impartial and adequately informed person could, 
beforehand, have forecast precisely the result in 
dissonance, mutual irritation, and ultimate explo- 
sion and disaster which inevitably come to pass. 
Without any preternatural wisdom or penetration, 
the bishop happens to be in a position where he is 
adequately informed, and if he were under ever so 
strong a personal or ecclesiastical bias, it is per- 
haps worth while to remember that he can hardly 
be so stupid, as well as wrong-headed, as to desire, 
or counsel, action which would issue in a disap- 
pointment and a failure sure to react largely upon 

[73] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



himself. In plainest English, I should be grate- 
ful, in the interests (putting it if you please, for a 
moment, upon the lowest conceivable grounds in 
such a connection) of the general peace and pros- 
perity of the diocese, if vestries, when taking 
action in the matter of the choice of one who is 
to minister among them, might make it a habit 
simply to afford the Ordinary an opportunity, for 
the sake of their own more intelligent action, of 
placing at their disposition such sufficiently au- 
thenticated information, with its sources if need be, 
as shall aid them in taking that action. 

This, I hope it will be owned, is a sufficiently 
modest suggestion, and I trust I may be permitted 
to say that I shall be much encouraged if it may, 
in connection with questions of kindred impor- 
tance, be borne in mind. I am keenly sensible, 
and I should be strangely indifferent if I did not 
gratefully acknowledge it, to a generous and con- 
siderate purpose on the part of the clergy and the 
laity to spare me needless burdens, and to soften 
as they may the pain and sorrow of those which 
every bishop is called upon to bear. But such 
an one must be willing to be, in this as in all 
other things, the servant of his brethren, and his 
service will be easier not harder, very often, if he 
is helped by a confidence which is given rather 
when it may be, than merely and only when it 
must be. If in the Church we are anything at all 
to one another, we are parts of one living and 
loving whole, in which nothing that is vital to any 
one of us can be indifferent, whether his respon- 
sibilities be larger or smaller, to any other. 

[74] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 



4. And this brings me naturally to speak in 
conclusion of the relations of wardens and vestry- 
men and their consequent responsibilities to the 
community. Let me make haste to say that I use 
that last word, for want of a better, in a double 
sense. The community with which, first of all, 
any one of us who, as a layman, bears office in the 
Church is concerned, is that community or com- 
munion which is the Church, first the parish and 
then the larger whole of which the parishes are a 
part, and so on till we touch the circumference 
of the "One Catholic and Apostolic Church" in 
which, in the symbol of Nicaea, we continually 
affirm our faith. 

It is, of course, easy enough, as I have already 
implied, to insist, if one chooses to, that those of 
the laity who in Easter-week are chosen to a cer- 
tain secular and fiduciary responsibility, can rightly 
be looked to for no more, to say that a vestryman 
is not an elder, or presbyter, and not even a sub- 
deacon ; but there remains the fact of such an one's, 
representative character, as commonly understood 
and accepted, wherever the parish exists. I think 
that by those who are the objects of this prevail- 
ing estimate it ought to be frankly and cordially 
accepted, and its obligations, as far as may be, 
cordially discharged. If one be an officer in a 
parish in communities where, as in many of ours, a 
knowledge of the Church is largely absent, and an 
ignorant and embittered prejudice largely present, 
it may justly be expected of him that he shall 
inform himself as to the Church's position and 
claims, and have a reason to give as to things 

[75] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

that, in multitudes of cases, are only stumbling- 
blocks so long as they are misunderstood, and that 
have come to be, in time, a part of a most pre- 
cious heritage to those by whom once they were 
scorned and reviled. There never was a time when 
such information, within the reach as it is of any 
busy man, in a score of admirable manuals and 
historical compendia, would have found such a wel- 
come as it is finding to-day. Prejudices have de- 
cayed, culture has spread and widened, the instinct 
of worship has wakened out of its long Puritan 
slumber, and the times are ripe as never before for 
that educational work of the Church which, mother 
of the English Bible and of the Book of Common 
Prayer as she is, none in all the world is so well 
equipped to do in this land as she. My brethren 
of the laity, who are wardens and vestrymen in our 
several parishes, may we not look to you for help 
and cooperation in this matter ? The encounters 
of daily intercourse, the inquiries of the unin- 
formed, the misrepresentations of the misinformed, 
offer, first in the parish and then in the larger com- 
munity which is outside of it, opportunities which, 
often, no one else can so effectually improve as 
you. 

But while such an one is making the most of 
his opportunities in the parish and in the office 
and the shop, he may not forget the relations of 
the former and of himself to that larger unit .which 
is the diocese. I have already spoken in other 
connections of the dangers of parochialism, and I 
am greatly cheered by the evidences among us of 
the awakening of a nobler spirit. But the more 

[76] 



OFFICES OF WARDEN AND VESTRYMAN 

selfish instincts of human nature are not readily 
overcome, and nothing is easier than to lose sight 
of a larger and more distant object by the process 
which persistently holds a smaller one much closer 
to the eye. Let us not, however, mistake its fruits. 
They can only be waste and feebleness, and, ulti- 
mately and inevitably, failure. And so I hope 
that in those larger undertakings, whatever they 
may be, whether in city or country, which are 
missionary or diocesan undertakings, we may find 
in the laity who are officers in our several parishes 
a reversal of that too prevalent policy that all extra- 
parochial interests are mistaken interests, and that 
a parish, while like that most useful institution, a 
modern locomotive, in that it consumes its own 
smoke, ought to be most unlike it in that it con- 
sumes all its resources, and yet moves no wheels 
but its own. The law of highest life in this regard 
is one, and it is universal: teaching we learn, — 
giving we get, — spending we are enriched. May 
God lift us all, laity and clergy, to the loftier point 
of vision that discerns this, and may He give to our 
whole Church throughout the land, as, dear breth- 
ren of the clergy, you and I have reason to bless 
Him that He has given to us, a body of laymen 
who, whether in vestries or out of them, have been 
in many precious instances our joy and crown, and 
for whose loyalty and love and service we may well 
thank God and take courage. cc The Lord bless 
them and keep them ! The Lord make His face 
to shine upon them and be gracious unto them ! 
The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon 
them and give them peace !" 

[77] 



THE 

RELATION OF THE CLERGY 
TO THE FAITH AND ORDER 
OF THE CHURCH 



THIRD TRIENNIAL CHARGE TO THE 
CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESE OF 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1, 1891 



[Extract from the Journal : 108 th Annual Conven- 
tion of the Diocese of New York. Second Day, 
October i, 1891.] 

cc The Rev. Dr. Dix offered the following reso- 
lution: 

Resolved, That two thousand copies of the 
Charge delivered by the Bishop of the Diocese on 
the opening of this Convention be printed and 
distributed under the direction of the Secretary. 

Which was adopted unanimously^" 



THE RELATION OF THE CLERGY 
TO THE FAITH AND ORDER OF 
THE CHURCH 



Brethren of the Clergy and Laity : 

THOUGH, under the provisions of the canon 
prescribing that duty, it is competent to the 
Ordinary to deliver a charge to the clergy of his 
diocese at his discretion, it is not usual to do so 
oftener than once in three years. I might well be 
excused, therefore, from undertaking, and you 
from being called on to listen to, a form of address 
so extended, were it not that, in the first place, 
such a charge is declared to be proper " at least 
once in three years," whereas I have thus spoken 
already but twice in an episcopate of eight years ; 
and, in the second place, because it is plainly my 
duty to be governed by the far more important 
consideration of the exigency of any particular 
emergency in the life and work of the Church in 
this diocese. 

Such an exigency, in my judgment, exists at 
present; and I shall therefore ask your attention 
at this time to some observations on the Relation 
of the Clergy to the Faith and Order of the 
Church. 

The relation, you will observe, of the clergy. 
[81] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

For the relations of the clergy and of the laity to 
the Church's Faith and Order are not identical. 
It is a very common misapprehension to suppose 
that they are; and out of this misapprehension, I 
would remark at the outset, has come a large 
share of the confusion which to-day exists in men's 
minds with regard to the whole subject. 

If we are to determine what are the relations of 
a layman to the faith and order of the Church, it 
would be proper, I should suppose, to turn to the 
offices of baptism, confirmation, and the Holy 
Communion, and to the catechism. When we do 
so, we find that the language which defines those 
relations, and determines the measure of one's 
obligations, is of a very general character. How 
great is the liberty for the indulgence of what, in 
the phrase of the Roman obedience, are called 
"pious opinions," it is not my province now to 
attempt to define; but I presume it would not be 
denied, for instance, that one could not be ex- 
cluded from the Holy Communion because he did 
not accept ex animo Article XVII, nor because he 
confounded the doctrine of the Real Presence, as 
this Church holds and teaches the same, with the 
Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation. Cer- 
tainly, there is nothing, either in the teaching of 
the Church or in her silence, to encourage, on the 
part of the faithful laity, indifference or ignorance 
concerning matters of Christian doctrine or eccle- 
siastical order; but just as certainly she has, as 
had her divine Lord and Head, a large and tender 
charity for an imperfect or halting faith. As the 
witness in the world of Him who so graciously 

[82] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 



welcomed one who could say no more than 
"Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief/' 
even so to-day it is her duty to welcome, and not 
to repel, those who have only a feeble grasp of the 
primary truths of her creeds, even though they 
may very inadequately apprehend the significance 
of some of the phrases in which those truths are 
couched. 

But the relation of the clergy to the faith and 
order of the Church is very different. It is much 
less indefinite, and, in one sense, its liberty is 
much more restricted. For the terms of that re- 
lation are to be learned not only from the sources 
to which I have just referred, but also in the more 
precise and specific language of the questions and 
answers contained in the various offices of the Ordi- 
nal. To take a single instance as illustrative of 
the difference between the two classes, When an 
adult comes to Holy Baptism he is asked, " Do 
you believe all the articles of the Christian Faith 
as contained in the Apostles' Creed ? " Now if 
such an one, having answered "I do," as the office 
provides, should further be interrogated by a 
minister whose zeal led him to import his personal 
opinions into the offices of the Church, " Do you 
accept unreservedly and literally, as scientifically 
true, the Biblical account of the six days of crea- 
tion ? " or, c< Do you not reject the doctrine of a 
tactual succession in the ministry as a vain super- 
stition ? " it would be entirely proper for the can- 
didate for Holy Baptism to decline to answer 
questions which, under such circumstances, would 
be simply a bald impertinence; even as it would 

[83] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

be the duty of the Ordinary promptly to call to 
account a priest who, under such circumstances, 
should most unwarrantably refuse to administer 
Holy Baptism. 

(i) But if, on the other hand, a person who has 
been ordained to the diaconate, the priesthood, or 
the episcopate, should deny the miraculous ele- 
ment in the four Gospels, or the authority of 
Holy Scripture in matters of faith, or the respect 
and submission due to the godly judgment of the 
bishop, then the assertion by such an one of his 
liberty under the promises of his baptism would 
be entirely irrelevant; since to these promises have 
been added the further and more definite and spe- 
cific obligations which are imposed and accepted in 
the office by which he has been admitted to the 
sacred ministry. For instance, when one is 
ordained to the diaconate, he makes a declaration 
as to his belief in the " Canonical Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments," which does not bind 
him to any particular theory of inspiration nor 
prevent him from recognizing in those books both 
a human and divine element, but does most as- 
suredly bind him to accept them as <c Canonical 
Scriptures" set forth by the authority of the 
Church for the edification of its people, so that 
while it is entirely competent to him to consider 
them both as a literature and part of a revelation, 
it is not competent to him to deal with them as if 
they were committed to him merely as a literature. 

Again, in the case of one ordained to the priest- 
hood, it is demanded, "Will you give your faith- 
ful diligence so to minister the doctrine and 

[«4] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

sacraments, and the discipline of Christ, as the 
Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath 
received the same ? " An assent to this demand 
creates at once a new and specific obligation, not 
only to minister doctrine, sacraments and discipline, 
but also to minister them as — i.e., in the same 
sense as that in which — "this Church hath re- 
ceived the same." If the sense in which this 
Church has received them is set forth not alone in 
the two creeds, but elsewhere in other offices and 
formularies of equal authority and obligation, then 
it would seem to be plain that the Church's con- 
struction of the doctrine was of equal, and equally 
binding, obligation on the priesthood; and that, 
so far as holding or teaching any other construc- 
tion of them is concerned, a man who is under the 
obligation of a priest's ordination vow has parted 
with his individual discretion. 

Yet again, one who is consecrated to the office 
of a bishop is required to take an oath of " con- 
formity and obedience to the doctrine, discipline 
and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America," and this en- 
gagement plainly excludes the liberty to deny or 
disown such doctrine, discipline, or worship in any 
particular. All these obligations are peculiar not 
to the laity but to the clergy. They belong to a 
separate class of vows, and they bind those who 
have made them in a way which is much farther- 
reaching and more precise than the elementary 
vows and conditions of ordinary Christian disci- 
pleship. 

The distinction is fundamental; and if it is only 

[85] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

held in mind, it ought at once and finally to dis- 
pose of a popular form of criticism and protest 
widely prevalent. In commenting upon discus- 
sions which have lately obtained elsewhere than 
within the Church, concerning the recasting of in- 
herited formularies and confessions, it has recently 
been said that there are men who admit that the 
formularies of theology should be recast in order 
to bring them into closer harmony with modern 
life and thought, and who, nevertheless, oppose 
and persecute all who attempt to recast any par- 
ticular formula. 

But plainly the question must be, who are they 
who are adducing arguments against the tradi- 
tional authority or the traditional order of the 
Church? What shall be the bounds of the 
liberty to be conceded to Christian scholarship and 
learning, outside of the ministry in this matter, I 
am not now called upon to define, but as to the 
metes and bounds of the liberty of men in Holy 
Orders there ought to be no doubt. The Church, 
for example, affirms of her divine Lord and Head 
that He was " conceived by the Holy Ghost, born 
of the Virgin Mary, crucified, dead and buried, 
and that the third day He rose again from the 
dead," and how this Church hath received the 
same doctrine she makes plain beyond a perad- 
venture by her language in the collect and proper 
preface for Christmas Day, and in other formulas 
which she sets forth in connection, e.g., with the 
special offices for Good Friday, Easter Even, 
Easter, and Ascension Days, and the like. What- 
ever indefiniteness there may seem to have been, 

[86] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

in any particular article of the creeds, these other 
formularies must be accepted by one who deals 
honestly with his ordination vows as explicitly in- 
terpreting them. And while even these do not 
shut out a certain latitude of construction, e.g., of 
the nature of the resurrection body, concerning 
which a great deal of so-called Christian and 
Churchly teaching has been so grossly material as 
to make one wonder if those who were responsible 
for it had ever heard of chapter xv of St. Paul's 
First Epistle to the Corinthians — yet, unless 
those formularies may rightfully be subjected to a 
treatment which a candid mind, unacquainted with 
theological controversies, would unhesitatingly 
pronounce to be sophistical and disingenuous, they 
would seem to require from those who are pledged 
to hold and teach them, so long as they are will- 
ing to remain so pledged, an assent and acceptance 
in that sense, and in that sense only, in which 
universally and without question this Church hath 
received the same. 

I know very well to what in this age we are 
indebted for a very different view of ecclesiastical 
formularies ; and we are having just now a very 
interesting and suggestive illustration of the way 
in which the theological acumen of one school and 
of one generation may return in another to plague 
its authors, when once it has been adopted by their 
antagonists. Among the most significant and preg- 
nant incidents in the theological history of this cen- 
tury was the publication by John Henry Newman 
of "Tract XC." As a method of dealing with 
questions of doctrine raised by the Thirty-nine 

[87] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Articles, it had certainly the distinction of novelty ; 
for, turning aside from the question of the authority 
of the Articles, it raised the very different question 
of their construction, in order to show how they 
were susceptible of an interpretation of which it 
may with truth be said that it largely dismissed from 
those formularies the meaning which until then had 
been popularly, and with virtual unanimity, under- 
stood to be the reason for their existence. In 
other words, the Articles had been supposed to be 
designed to set forth the essential distinction, in 
respect of the doctrines of which they treated, 
between Anglican and Roman teaching. It re- 
mained for Dr. Newman to show to an astonished 
communion that the apparently contradictory posi- 
tions of the two communions could be reconciled. 

It was the remarkable intellectual feat of an 
extraordinary mind — a mind of which a great 
archbishop who was contemporaneous with New- 
man wrote, many years afterwards : " I have always 
regarded Newman as having a strange duality of 
mind. On the one side is a wonderfully strong 
and subtile reasoning faculty, on the other a . . . 
faith, ruled almost entirely by his emotions. It 
seems to me that, in all matters of belief, he first 
acts on his emotions, and then he brings the sub- 
tilty of his reason to bear, till he has ingeniously 
persuaded himself that he is logically right." 1 

But in Newman's case it did not take a great 
while for the brilliant author of Tract XC to find 
that such methods as it illustrated brought with 
them no rest to a perplexed conscience ; and the 

1 Life of Archbishop Tatty vol. i., p. 89. 

[88] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

originator of them ere long withdrew from a min- 
istry whose obligations he could no longer reconcile 
with the change in his own beliefs. It was the 
most honorable, as it was doubtless the most pain- 
ful, act of his life. 

The results of a man's acts reach, however, a 
great way beyond his practical repudiation of them ; 
and to-day there are persons who have never read 
Tract XC — if they ever heard of it — who have 
come to regard it as an admitted principle that one 
may accept an ecclesiastical formula and hold an 
ecclesiastical position while he uses the latter in 
order to read into the former meanings which, in 
all the history of its formation and development, 
have been wholly foreign to the mind of the au- 
thority by which it was set forth. 

And this it is which has created in candid and 
ingenuous minds, whatever their religious beliefs, 
the gravest apprehensions. If it is supposed that 
those apprehensions are shared only by those who 
are tenaciously conservative of old and long-ac- 
cepted beliefs, such an impression is quite errone- 
ous. There are a great many people who are not 
so much concerned for the security of this or that 
belief as alarmed at the way in which some of its 
accepted guardians deal with it. A secular critic 
has lately said : cc We do not need to say that all 
our sympathies are with the men in various com- 
munions who are open-minded enough to see how 
the new wine of modern research is hopelessly 
bursting the old ecclesiastical wine-skins. . . . One 
position, however, assumed by some persons of this 
class is . . . that a minister may honorably remain 

[89] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

in the service of a Church, though repudiating 
leading articles of its creed. ... It is acknow- 
ledged that no man rejecting the articles in question 
could obtain admission to the ministry of the par- 
ticular body in the first instance. Still it is main- 
tained that, once in, he may rightfully stay ; in fact, 
that it is his duty to stay and reform the creed 
according to his notions. . . . The defence put 
forward for this position," continues the secular 
authority from which I am quoting, " will not bear 
examination. It consists, in the first place, in 
saying that it is monstrously absurd for the creed- 
makers of one age to bind the thinkers of the next. 
This is the worst form of the ( dead-hand,' we are 
told. But all this is aside from the point. The 
( dead-hand ' system is a fact in ecclesiastical organ- 
izations, whether we like it or not. Its legal 
sanctions are admitted ; that is unquestionable. 
It is the only way a communion has of maintaining 
its integrity. . . . And no man is called upon to 
submit himself to it with his eyes shut. The min- 
ister has the situation clearly put before him at his 
ordination, and accepts it. After thus deliberately 
accepting the c dead-hand ' system, what sort of a 
spectacle does a man present railing at its hard- 
ships ? He has put the yoke on his own neck ; if 
it galls let him throw it off ; but let him not deny 
the existence of the yoke. ... If men belong to 
a Church which has officially and publicly declared 
that the historical symbols are not regarded seri- 
ously any longer, even though nominally retained, 
we must absolve the ministers, while condemning 
the Church. But if they have seriously accepted 

[9°] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

the creed of a religious body which continues to 
take its creed seriously, and think they can flout 
it while still serving under it, we can only say that 
the mass of men will regard that as an immoral 
thing to do." 

I beg to remind you again, dear brethren, that 
these are the words of a purely secular observer 
of the present theological situation, given to the 
world in a purely secular organ of public opinion. 
I believe that they reflect the judgments of sober 
and honest minds with respect to the specific and 
exceptional obligations of the ministry in the mat- 
ter of the Church's faith, and they do so because 
they are judgments and convictions imbedded in 
the moral consciousness of all honest men. In 
another hemisphere a very eminent authority in 
the world of letters, looking at the same question 
from another point of view, has lately said: "Sup- 
posing a trust fund had been created for the pur- 
pose of expounding the beauties of Wordsworth, 
should we quite approve of a lecturer who accepted 
the stipend and devoted a good deal of energy to 
the skilful depreciation of Wordsworth? . . . We 
believe that the ground idea of revelation is abso- 
lutely true, and has been the security for the only 
mental and moral freedom the race has enjoyed. 
And we must say that we think the opposite view, 
if it is to be urged with sincerity and consistency 
at all, should be urged by men who are not con- 
tinually using liturgies which imply the very creeds 
they are denouncing, and offering up prayers 
which are pure mockeries unless God has really 
manifested Himself specially in Jewish history, 

[9-] ' 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and become incarnate in one human career equally 
majestic and submissive. Some day the close of 
this century will be described as the time when 
the heterodox thinkers began to fulminate against 
the orthodox, and Christians were almost treated 
as excommunicate, not because they believed less 
than they said, but because they did not regard 
their worship as a mere form of words of which 
the significance had to be carefully watered down 
until it became hardly significance at all." 1 

But at this point it may be asked, Is, then, one 
who is honestly perplexed concerning the funda- 
mental verities of the faith to stifle his perplexities, 
and to go on teaching or affirming as truth posi- 
tions concerning which he is no longer fully per- 
suaded that they are the truth, but is rather, it 
may be, profoundly persuaded that they are not 
the truth P Is uniformity of teaching to be main- 
tained at the cost of honest inquiry? Is a past 
pledge to bind a present conscience? Can any 
obligation of consistency warrant the maintenance 
of an attitude, outwardly, which is the expression 
of no inmost conviction ? 

These are entirely reasonable questions, but it 
is the misfortune of our time that, in the case of 
those who ask them, they are assumed to be sus- 
ceptible of only one answer, and that an answer 
which justifies a line of action that accepts and 
uses the formulary in one breath and then, while 
retaining the office which imposes it, disowns its 
authority with the other. It would seem that any 
candid mind, dealing with the subject without pre- 

1 The Spectator, London, August 15, 1891. 

[>] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

disposing prejudice, must admit such a conclusion 
to be simply grotesque. 

But what, then, it may be further demanded, is 
the duty of one in Holy Orders who can no longer 
accept the faith, or conform to the order of the 
Church whose minister he is? Is he to throw up 
his commission, retire from his office, and abandon 
the communion of the Church of which he is a 
member? I am by no means prepared to say 
that any such constraint is laid upon him, or, if it 
is, that it is a course which should be resorted to, 
save in the last, most sorrowful, extremity. But 
I am no less clear that in such a case, in the case, 
e.g. (for I have a strong desire to be as precise 
and specific as I can in this matter), of one who 
has parted with a faith in the supernatural element 
in the Holy Scriptures or in the person and work 
of Christ, there is no honest or honorable alter- 
native left but to suspend his ministrations, and 
temporarily, at any rate, to retire from the exer- 
cise of his sacred office, and address himself with 
prayer and abstinence, and most searching and 
candid inquiry, to an examination of the question 
or questions at issue. And I maintain, further, 
that it is preeminently his duty, at every step of 
such inquiry, to bring his impressions or conclu- 
sions to the bar of the Church's consistent and 
unvarying teaching, and to try and test what dis- 
turbs him by her clear voice, as that voice has 
spoken unfalteringly from the beginning. There 
is a large contempt in our time for patristic teach- 
ing, but we need not exaggerate the value of that 
teaching in order to demonstrate that, while much 

[93] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

of it was undoubtedly local and temporary in its 
character, there runs through it a clear and con- 
sistent stream of testimony to the person and 
work of Jesus Christ and to the divine order of 
the Holy Catholic Church, which no wise man 
will hastily disesteem. 

But, if neither this nor any other voice can 
answer the questions or relieve the perplexities of 
such an one as I have imagined, then I am unable 
to see how his office and he can do otherwise than 
part company. It is competent to any one in the 
ministry of the Church to ask from her councils 
an interpretation of her teaching. But, so long as 
that teaching remains so plainly what it is, one's 
liberty while in the ministry ends there. If any 
one among us thinks otherwise — if any class of 
men in Holy Orders shall ever be seen with one 
hand pulling down the very pillars of the temple, 
while with the other they are seeking to grasp every 
honor, dignity, and emolument which pertain to 
their office — and if the Church, whose servants 
they are, were to tolerate so monstrous an incon- 
sistency, then the one and the other would equally 
deserve the scorn and contempt of all honorable 
men. Again, let me say that I do not forget the 
ecclesiastical sophistry in which this very prevalent 
misconception began ; but when it is considered 
that much that is heard in the way of a destructive 
criticism would have little or no weight were it not 
for the surroundings amid which it is uttered — 
and when it is further considered that the present 
is a situation which has almost more than any other 
given the enemy occasion to blaspheme — it can- 

[94] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 



not be wondered that such facts provoked not alone 
profound grief and dismay, but keen and righteous 
resentment. 

But, dear brethren, we who would defend the 
Church's faith and order must see to it that in doing 
so we are not provoked to either extravagance or 
unreason. It is not uncommon, nowadays, to hear 
the statement deliberately uttered that the minds 
of a large proportion of the clergy are honeycombed 
with error, and corrupted with false doctrines. It 
is by no means unusual to hear it affirmed that the 
presence of prevalent disesteem for the order and 
ministry of the Church is exhibited in the conduct 
of her services and the practice of her clergy. 

Well, I presume that, while I cannot at a]J ven- 
ture to speak for those who are beyond my own 
jurisdiction, I may venture to speak for those who 
are within it. For much of the larger part of ten 
years I have been constantly going in and out 
among them under conditions which I presume 
the great majority of them will bear me out in 
saying are conditions of considerable and habitual 
unreserve. If anybody knows what is going on in 
the parishes of the Diocese of New York, whatever 
might be the adroitness of occasional or individual 
concealments, I presume that I do; and I beg 
to say that such general imputations as I have 
referred to are absolutely and utterly unwarranted. 
Individual eccentricities, extravagances, irregulari- 
ties, undoubtedly there are, and always will be. 
Occurring in and about a great center, they will 
always attract notice and receive extensive and 
wholly gratuitous advertisement — on which last, 

[95] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

it may incidentally be observed, such things largely 
subsist. But it is one thing to note this or that 
extravagance or eccentricity, whether in teaching 
or worship, and quite another to treat it as in any 
wise representative, or other than the isolated and 
exceptional thing that it is. I remember very 
vividly the growing surprise with which, when I 
began going about in the diocese eight years ago, 
I took note of the almost universal conservatism 
both in doctrine and in order which I encountered. 
It is distinctly the prevalent note in our diocesan 
situation to-day, as I believe it to be in that Ameri- 
can Church of which the diocese is a part. 

The present is not, therefore, in my judgment, 
a time for alarm, much less is it a time for an illus- 
tration of that reactionary spirit which, in its almost 
passionate desire to cling to certain traditions that 
are purely the fruit of a very modern Protestant- 
ism, forgets its Catholic heritage and its Catholic 
liberty. A very modern Protestantism, observe, 
I say, for I do not know anything that is more 
important for those who believe, as I certainly 
believe, that the Reformation contained something 
good, than to distinguish, for instance, in the 
matter of the authority of Holy Scripture, between 
the Protestantism of Milton and Luther and that 
of their modern heirs, who are in turn the inheritors 
of American Puritan theology. How far that the- 
ology has affected the minds of Churchmen (many 
of them the descendants of a Puritan ancestry) and 
has expressed itself in the teaching of our clergy 
in regard, e.g., to the Bible, I should not like to 
undertake to say. But it is time that it was dis- 

[96] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

tinctly affirmed that the Bible includes both a 
human element and a divine element, and that it 
is entirely competent for any one in Holy Orders, 
whether bishop, priest, or deacon, to say so, and, 
since it is so, to inquire how the two elements may 
be distinguished and to avail himself of every ade- 
quate aid in the conduct of such an inquiry. There 
are those on the one hand who maintain that the 
volume of literature which we call the Bible con- 
tains no divine element, and there are those on 
the other who maintain that it contains no human 
element. It is high time that it should be said 
that neither of these positions is the position of 
the Church. If it is, then it behooves those who 
say so to point out where this Church has said so. 
But as a matter of fact, as surely I need not remind 
those to whom I now speak, this is simply and 
utterly impossible. The Church has not com- 
mitted herself to any dogmatic definition of the 
meaning of inspiration, and whatever particular 
sects or schools may have attempted to do in this 
direction is wholly aside from the question. In- 
deed, as has lately been forcibly pointed out : " It 
is remarkable that Origen's almost reckless mys- 
ticism 1 and his accompanying repudiation of large 
parts of the narrative of the Old Testament and 
of some parts of the New, though it did not gain 
acceptance, and indeed had no right to it (for it 
had no sound basis) ; on the other hand never 
aroused the Church to contrary definitions. Nor 
is it only Origen who disputed the historical char- 
acter of parts of the narrative of Holy Scripture. 
1 Origen : De Principiis, iv. 15, 16, 17. 

[97] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Clement before him in Alexandria, and the me- 
diaeval Anselm in the West, treat the seven days 
of creation as an allegory and not history. Atha- 
nasius speaks of paradise as c a figure/ and a 
mediaeval Greek writer, who had more of Irenaeus 
than remains to us, declares that he did not know 
how those who kept to the letter and took the 
account of the Temptation historically rather than 
allegorically could meet the arguments of Irenaeus 
against them. 

" The Church, then, is not tied by any existing 
definition of inspiration. We cannot make any 
exact claim upon any one's belief in regard to 
inspiration, simply because we have no authoritative 
definition to bring to bear upon him. Those of 
us who believe most in the inspiration of the 
Church will see a divine providence in this absence 
of dogma, because we shall perceive that only now 
is the state of knowledge such as admits of the 
question being legitimately raised." 1 

And meantime, it ought to comfort those to 
whom such discussions are most alarming because 
so entirely unfamiliar, to be reminded that, after 
all, the true object of much of modern criticism, 
that does not aim simply to be destructive, was 
equally the aim of those fathers of the Church 
whose teachings we are taught to hold in reverent 
estimation. " Thus St. Gregory of Nazianzus," as 
the writer whom I have already quoted points out, 
" speaking of God's dealings with the Jews of old, 
describes how, in order to gain the cooperation of 
man's good will in working for his recovery, He 

1 Gore : The Holy Spirit and Inspiration, pp. 357, 358. 

[98] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

dealt after the manner of a school-master or phy- 
sician, and, while curtailing part of their ancestral 
customs, tolerated the rest, making some conces- 
sion to their tastes, just as physicians make their 
medicines palatable that they may be taken by their 
patients. . . . Hence the first law, while it abol- 
ished their sacrifices, allowed them to be circum- 
cised ; then, when once they had accepted the 
removal of what was taken from them, they went 
further and gave up what had been conceded to 
them — in the first case, their sacrifices, and in the 
second their practice of circumcision — and they 
became instead of heathens, Jews, instead of Jews, 
Christians, being betrayed, as it were, by gradual 
changes into acceptance of the Gospel. 1 Again, 
St. Chrysostom explains how it is the very merit 
of the Old Testament that it has taught us to think 
things intolerable which under it were tolerated. 
c Do not ask,' he says, c how these Old Testament 
precepts can be good now when the need for them 
is past; ask how they were good when the period 
required them. Or, rather, if you wish, do inquire 
into their merit, even now. It is still conspicuous, 
and lies in nothing so much as what now enables 
us to find fault with them. Their highest praise 
is that we now see them to be defective.' " 2 

And plainly, if it was competent for patristic 
criticism thus to discriminate between the tempo- 
rary and the permanent, the human and divine 
elements in the substance of Holy Scripture, it is 
competent for a reverent criticism to do the same 

1 Gregory Nazianzus : Orat. xxx. 25. 

2 Chrys. in Matth. Homil. 

[99] 



•L.of C. 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

thing as to the letter of it now. " Inspiration," it 
has pertinently been declared, " means the illumi- 
nation of the judgment of the recorder." " By 
the contact of the Holy Spirit," says Origen, " they 
became clearer in their mental perception, and their 
souls were filled with a brighter light." 1 " But 
have we any reason," asks Mr. Gore, " to believe 
that inspiration means over and above this, the 
miraculous communication of facts not otherwise 
to be known, a miraculous communication such as 
would make the recorder independent of the ordi- 
nary processes of historical tradition P Certainly 
neither St. Luke's preface to his Gospel, nor the 
evidence of any inspired record justifies this asser- 
tion," and just as certainly " the Church repudiated 
the Montanist conception of inspiration according 
to which the inspired man speaks as the passive 
instrument of the Spirit"; to which it may be 
added, as pointed out by Epiphanius in an earlier 
age, and by Westcott and Mason in our own, that 
" metaphors which describe the Holy Spirit as 
acting upon a man c like a flute player breathing 
into his flute,' or c a plectrum striking a lyre,' 
have always a suspicion attaching to their use of 
heresy." 2 

And, if so, then another view of the Bible, at 
once more catholic and more defensible, cannot be 
denied to those who find in it their surest road to 
an intelligent and impregnable position with refer- 
ence to the Holy Scripture. Nay, more, it needs, 
I think, with much plainness to be said that those 

1 Origen : Contra Celsum, vii. 4. 

2 Gore : The Holy Spirit and Inspiration, p. 343. 

[100] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

who are striving with a loyalty to Catholic tradition 
and with a tenderness and reverence for Holy 
Scripture, which is only greater than their tender- 
ness and consideration for their fellow-believers, to 
find a basis of reconciliation between historic criti- 
cism and the inherited faith of the Church are 
doing a work for which they greatly deserve to be 
had in lasting and grateful remembrance. The 
want of our time, we are told, is for something 
which, amid the vagueness, the uncertainty, the con- 
tradictoriness of the thousand voices which assail 
us shall speak with definiteness. Yes, it is, but it 
is no less, nay, even more, I think, something 
which shall speak with discrimination. One of the 
small but courageous and reverent group of men 
to whom I have already referred observes with sin- 
gular pertinency, just here : " In the truths which 
the Church teaches, we may distinguish two classes : 
First there are the central truths to which it bears 
absolute witness, such as the Fatherhood of God, 
the person and work of Jesus Christ, the redemp- 
tion of all mankind, the origin and purpose of 
human life. These it teaches authoritatively. Its 
conduct is exactly analogous to a parent teaching 
the moral law to its children ; teaching the com- 
mandments at first, till the child can be educated 
to understand the reason of them. So the Church 
says to her children, or to those who are seeking 
after truth, there is an absolute truth in religion as 
well as in morality: we have tested it ; generations 
of the saints have found it true. It is a truth in- 
dependent of individual teachers ; independent of 
the shifting moods of opinion at any particular 

[IOI] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

period, and you must accept it on our authority 
first. Further, these truths affect life, and they 
cannot be apprehended merely by the intellect. 
You must commit yourself to them; act upon 
them ; there is a certain time when the seeker after 
truth sees where it lies ; then it must cease to be 
an open question." You must, in the words of 
Tertullian, "seek till you find, but, when you have 
once found truth, you must commit yourself to 
it." 1 You must believe that you may understand, 
but it is that you may understand ! The dogma 
is authoritatively taught that the individual may be 
kept safe from mere individual caprice and fanciful- 
ness, but also that he himself may come to a rational 
understanding of his belief. No doubt the truth 
is so wide that, to the end of our lives, we shall 
still feel the need of guidance and of teaching. 
. . . Like St. Ignatius on his way to martyrdom, 
the Christian may feel at his dying day, " Now I 
begin to be a disciple," but the aim of the Church 
is to make each member have a rational hold upon 
his faith. When we are young we accept a doctrine 
because the Church teaches it to us ; when we are 
grown up, we love the Church because it taught 
us the doctrine. " The Churchman," as Principal 
Hawkins has said in his sermons on the Church, 2 
" never surrenders his individual responsibility. 
But he may and must surrender some portion at 
least of his independence and he benefits greatly 
by the surrender." " Submission to the authority 

1 Tertullian : Pr&scr. 9 : Quaerendum est donee inventus et 
credendum ubi inveneris. 

2 Page 77. 

[ioz] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

of the Church is the merging of our mere individ- 
ualism in the whole historic life of the great 
Christian brotherhood ; it is making ourselves at 
one with the one religion in its most permanent 
and least mere local form. It is surrendering our 
individuality only to empty it of its narrowness." 1 

" Secondly, there are other truths which are 
rather deductions from these central points, or 
statements of them in accordance with the needs of 
the age ; such as the mode of the relation of the 
divine and human nature in Christ, or free-will, or 
predestination, or the method of the Atonement, 
or the nature of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. 
If, in any case, a point of this kind has consciously 
come before the whole Church and been reasoned 
out and been decided upon, such a decision raises 
it to the higher class of truths which are taught 
authoritatively : but if this is not so, the matter 
remains an open question. It remains a question 
for theologians, it is not imposed on individuals, 
though it may at any time become ripe for decision. 
The very fixity of the great central doctrines allows 
the Church to give a remarkable freedom to indi- 
vidual opinion on all other points. Practically how 
much wider is the summary of the rule of faith as 
given in Irenaeus (III 4) or Tertullian (Pr<escr. 13) 
or Origen (De Principiis) or in the Apostles' or 
Nicene Creed, than the tests of orthodoxy that 
would be imposed in a modern religious circle. 

" St. Vincent of Lerins is the great champion of 
antiquity as the test of truth, yet it is he who also 
insists on the duty of development, of growth, 

1 C. Gore: Roman Catholic Claims, p. 51. 

[>3] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

within the lines of the central truths. . . . c As 
the time goes on/ he says, 'it is right that the old 
truths should be elaborated, polished, filed down. 
. . . They should be made clear, have light 
thrown upon them, be marked off from each 
other, but they must not lose their fulness, their 
entirety, their essential character/ 1 

" So it has happened in the course of the Chris- 
tian history; doctrines like that of the Atonement 
have been restated afresh to meet the needs of the 
age. So it is happening still; doctrines like that 
of the method of creation, or the limits of inspira- 
tion, are still before the Church. The Church is 
slow to decide, to formulate, it stands aside, it re- 
iterates its central truths, it says that whatever 
claims to be discovered must ultimately fit in with 
the central truths; Creation must remain God's 
work; the Bible must remain God's revelation of 
Himself; but for a time it is content to wait, loyal 
to fact, from whatever side it comes; confident 
alike in the many-sidedness and in the unity of 
the truth. While he accepts and while he searches, 
the Churchman can enjoy alike the inquiry of 
truth, which is the wooing of it, the knowledge 
of the truth, which is the presence of it, and the 
belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, and 
all these together, says Lord Bacon, 2 are the 
sovereign good of human nature." 3 

(2) And as of the Church's faith so of the 
Church's order, and of the relation of those who 

1 St. Vincent of Lerins: Communitorium, ix. and xxiii. 

2 Bacon: Essay on Truth. 

3 The Rev. Walter Locke: The Church , pp. 387-9. 

[104] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

are her ministers to the observance of that order. 
As to the institution of the order, government, and 
ministry of the Church, there has not in all ages 
been one opinion, nor is it likely that there 
ever will be. The language which in the Ordinal 
prefaces the offices of ordination declares that " It 
is evident unto all men diligently reading Holy 
Scripture and ancient authors, that from the 
apostles' time there have been these three orders 
of ministers in Christ's Church — bishops, priests, 
and deacons : which offices were evermore held in 
such reverent estimation that no man might pre- 
sume to execute any of them, except he were first 
called, tried, examined, and known to have such 
qualities as are requisite for the same, and also 
by public prayer, with imposition of hands, 
were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful 
authority." 

You and I, dear brethren, most of us, know 
what we understand by these words and what may 
with strictest truth be said to have been the preva- 
lent understanding of them in all ages of the 
Church. Despite the ridicule which has been 
widely cast upon the doctrine of the Apostolic Suc- 
cession (a ridicule, it must be owned, often pro- 
voked by the arrogance of those pretensions which 
have too frequently accompanied it, and by the 
want of Christian courtesy or charity with which 
its claims have been urged), the great mass of 
Churchmen, I am disposed to think, accept the 
authority of an apostolic ministry, with a due and 
substantially unbroken succession and continuity, 
as in accordance with the facts of history and the 
[105] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

wants of men. They are not greatly disturbed by 
the crimes of popes, or the corruptions of councils. 
They have seen the power of the Church in one 
part, if not in every part, to purge itself of error 
and to return humbly and reverently to the purity 
and simplicity of primitive doctrine and of primi- 
tive order. And as in nature one has seen the 
electric current overleap a break in the twisted 
wire along which it flashes, and fly onwards on its 
swift and enkindling errand, through further 
reaches of the same far-traveling agency, so they 
have seen the primitive and apostolic graces pierce 
their way through glooms of error and shame, and 
overleap the gaps in neglected order or discipline, 
and speed on those heavenly errands of healing 
and light on which the Church, Catholic and Apos- 
tolic, now, as of old, is hastening. That those 
gifts and graces manifest themselves nowhere else 
and under no other conditions than within her 
fold, who are they that shall presume to affirm? 
" In those ever open portals " (of the kingdom of 
God), says Dr. Pusey in his Responsibility of the 
Intellect in Matters of Faith — "in those ever 
open portals there enter that countless multitude 
whom the Church knew not how to win, or, alas ! 
neglected to win them." But the question is simply 
whether the ministry has not always "advanced 
upon the principle of succession, so that whatever 
functions a man held at any time were simply those 
that had been committed to him by some one 
among his predecessors who held the authority to 
give orders by regular devolution from theapostles." 1 

1 Gore: The Christian Ministry, p. 343. 

[106] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

There are many of us, and I am free to say that 
I find myself among them, who are quite suffi- 
ciently clear for all practical purposes on this 
point. "It was," says Stanton in his work on the 
Christian Ministry Historically Considered, " a law, 
as it were, of the being of the Church that it 
should put on this (the threefold or episcopal) 
form of organization — a law which worked as 
surely as the growth of a particular kind of plant 
from a particular kind of seed. Everywhere there 
was a development which made unerringly for the 
same goal. This seems to speak of divine insti- 
tution almost as plainly as if our Lord had in so 
many words prescribed this form of Church gov- 
ernment. He, the Founder, the Creator of the 
Church, would seem to have impressed upon it 
this nature." 

Says Mr. Gore, referring to this language : 
" Mr. Darwin, writing about his theory of the 
process of evolution in nature, uses these words, 
c I fully admit that there are very many diffi- 
culties not satisfactorily explained by my theory 
of descent with modification ; but I cannot possibly 
believe that a false theory would explain so many 
classes of facts as I think this certainly does ex- 
plain. On these grounds I drop my anchor, and 
believe that the difficulties will slowly disappear." 1 
" It is interesting to notice," continues Mr. Gore, 
"what grounds of evidence a great scientific teacher 
thinks adequate to support a far-reaching doctrine; 
and it is impossible not to perceive what infinitely 
higher grounds we have for our theory of the 

1 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ii., p. 217. 
[•°7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Apostolic Succession. It not only explains many- 
classes of facts, but it, and it only (though of 
course the cogency of the positive evidence for it 
is different at different stages), appears to explain 
all the phenomena of the Christian ministry from 
the beginning. We, then, have better cause to 
drop our anchor." 1 For one, I profoundly be- 
lieve that we have, and I am glad of the opportu- 
nity to relieve the possible apprehensions of some 
perturbed brethren by saying so. 

But when I have, there is something more that 
still remains. There is a view of the ministry 
which is held by some of the clergy, and by more, 
I presume, of the laity of this Church, which is 
quite a different one. It explains its threefold 
character as the result of circumstances, — provi- 
dential circumstances, most surely, since, as a mat- 
ter of fact, to a Christian mind there can be no 
other, — rather than as a matter of specific divine 
purpose and institution. It holds the episcopate 
to be necessary indeed to the completeness of the 
Church, but not, certainly, to its existence ; or, to 
put it in a familiar way, as necessary to its well- 
being, but not, absolutely, to its being. It holds 
the episcopate to be distinguishable from the pres- 
byterate, rather by a law of convenience than by 
any higher law. And it carries out these opinions, 
more or less explicitly, to their logical conclusions 
in its judgments of the divisions of Christendom 
and in its relations to those who represent them. 

I am not one of those who have been able to 
find in such views any sufficient warrant in Holy 

1 Gore: The Christian Ministry, pp. 343-4. 

[108] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

Scripture or in Christian history; and I am quite 
free to say that the latest effort to enforce them, 
in the very able and brilliant lectures of Dr. 
Hatch, seems to me to involve the grave peril of 
proving a great deal too much. It is difficult, in 
other words, to see how an argument which de- 
rives the organic form of the Church from the 
coincidence of local circumstances, and largely, if 
not completely, eliminates the element of a divine 
and prevenient ordering and purpose, might not 
with equal appropriateness be applied to matters of 
doctrine as well as of orders. But, on the other 
hand, that it is not competent for one in Holy 
Orders in this Church to hold and affirm views of 
the origin and character of its threefold ministry 
such as I have just indicated, can only be alleged 
by one who is grossly ignorant, whether of the 
history of the Church of England or of our own, 
or deliberately determined to misrepresent both. 
The effort which we have lately seen in this 
Church to defeat the confirmation of an eminent 
presbyter elected to the episcopate, and to defeat 
it by methods which, in the judgment of all 
decent people, ought to redound to the lasting 
dishonor of those who employ them, was an effort 
ostensibly to compass that defeat on grounds of 
theological unsoundness, but really, so far as it 
had any respectable championship, because the 
Bishop-elect did not happen to hold the prevalent 
view of the Apostolic Succession. It does not 
seem to have occurred to objectors that a different 
view from this was long held by the venerated 
and saintly man who, for the first fifty years of its 
[109] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

history, was the presiding bishop of this Church, 
and that William White was by no means the only 
presiding bishop who has held such a view. It 
seems quite as little to have occurred to them that, 
if such a view be a positive disqualification for the 
episcopate, it would have excluded scores of men 
from the House of Bishops, some of whom have 
lent to it much of the noblest lustre with which it 
has ever shone. It does not seem to have occurred 
to them, either, that what is true of the American 
is quite as true of the Anglican Church. Least of 
all does it seem to have occurred to them that this 
endeavor to force the view of one party or school 
as a finality upon the whole Church is simply so 
much partisan intolerance. But it would seem 
that it ought to have occurred to them. We may 
regret, dear brethren, as I am quite free to say I 
do, that any man called to a high and sacred office 
does not see its sanctions and trace its authority 
along the lines that seem so clear to us. But an 
intelligent recognition of the relations of the clergy 
to questions of ecclesiastical order in our time de- 
mands that we must recognize the liberty, as well 
as the limitations, which pertain to every man 
among them. 

And here I desire to say that I do not for- 
get those limitations as they are indicated in the 
canonical legislation of this Church, and that I am 
glad of the opportunity to say to the clergy of this 
diocese that the Church's law in this particular is, 
on the whole, in my judgment, both wise and 
timely. That law, as you will remember, is stated 
in Canon 14 and Canon 22 of Title I of the 
[no] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

Digest, and its object, plainly enough, is to protect 
the people committed to our charge from un- 
authorized or erroneous teaching. Undoubtedly 
there are times when its rigid application may seem 
to some of us to deny to Church people too much, 
and to deprive us of the edification of teachers 
who make no claim to hold the orders of this 
Church, but who have nevertheless won wide and 
respectful recognition as being in the true spiritual 
succession of the prophets of an elder time. I 
can very well understand that feeling, though I 
have never at any period in my own ministry 
found myself seriously tempted to yield to it, being 
persuaded, I must own, that it was open to the 
suspicion of being of scant courtesy to those to 
whom it seemed to extend courtesy, and — quite 
apart from the question of its canonical irregu- 
larity — of doubtful edification to those for whose 
benefit it was designed. I can very well under- 
stand, also, how, for example, the spectacle of the 
appearance of one who made no claim to any 
ministerial ordination or commission whatever, and 
whose fellowship denied to all infants the saving 
grace of Holy Baptism, as a public teacher, in the 
cathedral church of another diocese than our own, 
might create a good deal of confusion in the minds 
of well-meaning and kindly disposed clergy, eager 
to reach out a brotherly hand to Christians of 
other names around us. But even a spectacle re- 
sembling this, sporadic, exceptional, and wholly 
unlikely to provoke general or even occasional 
imitation, has not seemed to me a sufficient reason 
for invoking the penalties of the law of the Church, 
[in] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

If, however, in this I shall hereafter see reason 
— as I have not yet seen — to believe myself mis- 
taken, it is proper that I should say here publicly, 
what I have had occasion already to say privately, 
that if the prohibitions of Canon 14 of Title I are 
to be invoked in one direction, they could not 
with any propriety be withheld from application 
in another. We have had Greeks and Armenians 
and Old Catholics, not only preaching from the 
pulpits, but celebrating at the altars of some of our 
most venerable churches and chapels. No one of 
these persons was "licensed or ordained according 
to" our canons, nor were all of them (as, for ex- 
ample, those of the Greek or Russian Church) in 
any sense "communicants of this Church." Nay, 
more, the hospitable and charitable invitations to 
such persons to perform their services in our 
sanctuaries — invitations which the Catholic heart 
of the whole Church has applauded — fall, and that 
by the strictest and most literal construction, 
within the express prohibitions, not of one, but of 
two, canons of the Church. Such ecclesiastics 
were not, as I have said, " licensed or ordained to 
minister in this Church," and, unhappily, they 
could not be called "communicants of this 
Church," yet they were invited to " officiate " and 
"minister" in unequivocal "acts of sacerdotal 
function " — and not only so, but " in perform- 
ing such service" they were expected and intended 
to use " other prayers than those prescribed by 
the Book of Common Prayer." I do not see 
how, under a rigid rule of construction, the con- 
clusion can be avoided that these most charitable 

[112] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

invitations were in direct contravention of the 
plain prohibitions of Canon 14 of Title I and also 
of Section 1 of Canon 22 of the same Title. And 
it must be obvious that, if the penal machinery of 
the Church is to be set in operation for the punish- 
ment of one class of offences, under the canons 
above referred to it cannot stop this side of its 
application to another (and in one aspect of them) 
more flagrant set of offences under the same can- 
ons, simply because they who have invoked the 
canon do not wish it to punish offenders with 
whom they themselves happen to be in sympathy. 

Nay, more, dear brethren, it is my duty to remind 
you that all these things belong to a still larger 
class of things done by the clergy of various schools 
and tendencies, which men of other schools hold 
to be contrary to the order of this Church. If we 
are to enter upon a course of discipline toward one 
class, we must not linger to initiate it toward 
another, and, just as plainly, we must persist in 
attempting to accomplish by the application of 
penal discipline what, in the long run, can only be 
accomplished by lifting the standard of personal 
loyalty and deepening in the individual consciences 
of the clergy a reverence for the Church's voice of 
authority. 1 

1 In his Essay on State, Church, and the Synods of the Future, 
Prebendary Irons has recalled, in this connection, the history of 
Canonical Discipline as illustrated in the eighty-five '* Canons 
Apostolical," which, after many centuries of growth and develop- 
ment, became the celebrated "DecretAim" of Gratian, and is now 
the substance of the Roman Canon Law. He justly remarks of 
this attempt in the Latin Church to construct a vast, minute, con- 
sistent, and rigid body of Canon Law, "It is a gigantic monument 

l ll 3] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

But in saying this let me not be misunderstood. 
It is commonly supposed — at least, I am often 
told so — that I am keenly averse to ecclesiastical 
trials. I am quite free to say that, under the 
present law of this Church, I shall very reluctantly 
initiate one ; for I confess that to expect, as in some 
particulars our present canons do seem to contem- 
plate, that the Ordinary shall serve as grand jury, 
prosecuting attorney, and judge, all in one, is simply 
a legal absurdity. But if the clergy want their 
brethren tried, let me say plainly that they must 
be willing in each case to get behind the indictment 
and shoulder the responsibility of bringing accu- 
sations against their brethren — accusations which 
too many are ready enough to repeat, but a little 
more ready to disown when they are called to ac- 
count for them. When they do that, they will 
discover, as some of them have already discovered, 
that the machinery of the law will be set in motion 
quite as promptly as they could desire. 

But indeed, as I have already implied, whether 
it is set in motion or not is, as our canon law stands 
at present, a matter of very little consequence. 
When a diocesan court has done its utmost to 
punish an offender, it is only a diocesan court after 
all. What is heterodoxy to-day in one jurisdiction 
may to-morrow be pronounced by some other court 
in another to be orthodoxy, and until the Church 

of self-confessed failure," and he adds, "Nowhere is the disci- 
pline of the Canon law obeyed or in a condition to be obeyed." 
For a further discussion of this subject I would refer to a Charge 
delivered to the Convention of the Diocese of New York on St. 
Michael and All Angels' Day, 1886, on "Law and Loyalty." 

["4] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

provides some ultimate Court of Appeal in matters 
of Faith and Order, diocesan decisions upon either 
subject will absolutely determine nothing. 

"Very well, then," it may be said, "if the law 
cannot help us, there is left at least the refuge of 
petition, of protest, of remonstrance. " Yes, and 
it is a most sacred refuge. Palsied be the hand that 
would seek to rob even the feeblest of us of it ! But 
when it is invoked it would be well, as I think you 
will agree with me, that it should be so employed as 
at least to recognize the laws of good breeding. "I 
find it sometimes easier," said a great French 
archbishop, c c to make my clergy proficient in the- 
ology than in filial and fraternal courtesy." I am 
glad to believe, dear brethren, that in these latter 
graces no one of us would willingly be deficient. 1 

1 Those who heard this Charge delivered will remember that 
it contained, in this connection, a particular reference to action 
concerning which I have since received from a sufficiently re- 
sponsible source an explicit disclaimer of any intended discourtesy. 
The particular reference therefore disappears from the Charge, and 
I am glad to have an assurance which enables me to dismiss it from 
these pages. At the same time it is necessary to say that the com- 
munication to a Bishop, whether in his personal or official character, 
of a document addressed exclusively to himself, in the form of a 
printed circular, is not a proper or sufficient communication of it; 
and still further, that it is not competent, if one is governed by 
the ordinary and recognized canons of courtesy, for an individual, 
or any number of individuals, to make public such a document 
until its receipt by the person to whom it has been addressed has 
been definitely ascertained, and a reasonable opportunity has been 
afforded for its acknowledgment. That such acknowledgment 
may not be desired is, in such a case, wholly aside from the 
point ; and precipitancy of this sort exposes those who have ex- 
cluded the opportunity for a reply to the imputation of motives 
which they themselves would be the first to disown. 

["5] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

But in the matter of the relations of the clergy 
to the faith and order of the Church there is one 
thing in which we all need instruction, and with a 
reference to that I may well close this discussion. 
It is a very natural instinct of human nature, and 
it has been, alas, a very preeminent distinction of 
people who have supremely arrogated to themselves 
the title of theologians, to crush out opinions that, 
upon whatever question, do not happen to accord 
with their own. But it is an instinct as ignoble as 
it is common, and, more than that, it is one the 
triumph of which would be scarcely less fatal to the 
true life and growth of the Church than the widest 
prevalence of error. In a body which, while, as 
we rejoice to believe, under divine guidance and 
inspiration, is still made up of very frail and faulty 
members, led by very fallible and often very im- 
perfectly formed guides, no graver or more perilous 
situation could come to pass than that in which the 
due proportion of the faith and the due balance of 
opposite aspects of the one truth were no longer 
maintained by the differing and sometimes appar- 
ently dissonant voices of its teachers. The moment 
that we have affirmed a truth we are bound to admit 
that there are, and rightly ought to be, various 
standpoints from which to look at it. There are 
those to whom, constitutionally, such a statement 
is intolerable ; but that does not alter the fact. 
And, because it is the fact, the Church's duty in 
our time is clear. We want defenders of the 
Church's liberty, as well as of the Church's ortho- 
doxy, and we want on this point, and especially on 
the part of the episcopate, a candor in leadership 
[1.6] 



RELATION OF THE CLERGY 

which honest men have a right to look for from 
those who are over them. There is a divine doc- 
trine, but let us take care that in defining it we do 
not make it narrower than Christ Himself has made 
it ! There is a divine order, but let us not seek 
only so inexorably to enforce it that, like those iron 
images of the middle ages, it shall crush the life 
out of the victim whom it embraces. The question 
for us who are ministers of this Church is how the 
two sides of its truth are to be united in that kind 
of Churchmanship which shall stand for all the 
sanctities of the individual soul in the sanctity of 
the Church itself, as the very institution of sacred- 
ness — holy in its government, in its rites, in its 
creeds, because only in and by these can the very 
idea of holiness, or wholeness, be maintained ; and 
therefore, insisting on this supreme holiness in its 
unity, its hierarchy, its worship and its faith, while 
never losing sight of the fact that the ground of 
all holiness is in reason, and that reason must be 
respected in its freedom, lest truth shall be untruly 
believed, and loyalty be disloyally given, and wor- 
ship be paid by an unworshiping heart. Authority 
is not its own end. Parentage is not for the sake 
of parentage. The end of parentage is that the 
child may be a man. The end of authority is 
spiritual freedom. To-day the Church and civili- 
zation by the Church have reached the period where 
the child is nearing manhood, where authority must 
justify itself, where the reason of man must find 
itself in the reason of the Church, and so feel free 
while obeying that reason as, in the truest sense, 
its own. Authority and reason, order and freedom, 
["7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

spirit and form, this is the true definition of the 
Catholic Church, and of the Churchmanship which 
our times want — because all times want it. Under 
the dominion of such a spirit self-will will distrust 
itself, and the reason of one be qualified and en- 
nobled by the larger reason of the whole ; and under 
it, most of all, our ministry — yours and mine, 
my reverend brethren — will become a ministry of 
reconciliation, reconciling the past and the present, 
the Church and the individual, the soul and God. 
May God hasten that day! 



THE TEACHING OFFICE OF 
THE CHURCH 



A CHARGE 
DELIVERED TO THE CONVENTION 
OF THE DIOCESE OF NEW YORK 
SEPTEMBER 26, 1900 



THE TEACHING OFFICE OF THE 
CHURCH 



Brethren of the Clergy and Laity : 

THE language of the Canon 1 which lays upon 
the Episcopate a certain obligation with 
reference to the delivery, from time to time, of 
a Charge is such as to make compliance with that 
obligation in a certain sense discretionary. It is 
as follows : " It is deemed proper that every 
Bishop of the Church shall deliver at least once in 
three years a Charge to the Clergy of his diocese, 
unless prevented by reasonable cause." I suppose 
the terms employed here are not absolutely man- 
datory. But they do seem to impose a certain 
duty ; and largely as the habit of delivering an 
Episcopal Charge seems to have fallen into disuse, 
I must own that I am unable to excuse myself in 
this connection from a distinct sense of obligation. 
There must be times when particular counsels are 
particularly demanded, and I have not been able 
to feel that a few disconnected criticisms, com- 
ments, or suggestions, scattered rari nantes in gur- 
gite Vasto of Diocesan statistics, quite meet the 
requirements of such occasions. I shall ask your 
1 Sec. ix of Canon 1 9 of Title I of the Digest. 

[121] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

attention, therefore, this morning, while I say some 
words of 

The Teaching Office of the Church. 

Of our common obligation in this matter there 
can be, I suppose, no smallest question. The 
first commission of Christ to the men whom He 
called to lay the foundations of His Church ran, 
in this connection, in terms at once unmistakable 
and explicit. When, at the close of His earthly 
ministry, Christ is about to bring to an end His 
earthly relations with His Apostles, these are His 
final words : " Go ye, therefore, and teach all na- 
tions." 1 The Greek term which He uses for 
"teach," you remember, is /xa^reucrare, which is 
sometimes rendered " make disciples or pupils." 
But, as though to leave the matter in no slightest 
shadow of obscurity, He proceeds at once to add, 
" Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching 
them (SiSdcrKovTes) to observe all things whatso- 
ever I have commanded you." 2 

And when we turn from His precept to His 
example, the references in the Four Gospels to 
Teaching, to His teaching office, and to right 
teaching as the only right foundation for a right 
life, are such as to make plain forever to the 
Church its duty and office as the keeper of His 
Truth, as the guardian of His divine deposit — 
to teach. 

In other words, the office of those upon whom 
was laid the duty not only of laying foundations, 
1 St. Matthew, xxviii. 19. 2 St. Matthew, xxviii. 20. 

[»*] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

but the scarcely less grave duty, upon those foun- 
dations, of rearing a living and enduring fabric of 
souls, was not to coerce, but to enlighten; not to 
compel, but by the power of truth to constrain; 
not merely or mainly in the presence of error to 
denounce, but, by the disclosure of a true as 
against a false conception of duty, a right as against 
a wrong standard of conduct, a divinely revealed 
as against a humanly devised system of ethics, to 
instruct. " I speak as unto wise men," says the 
Apostle, when the word employed means plainly 
not men of complete or unerring wisdom, but 
rather men with the powers and faculties for recog- 
nizing a true wisdom, — "judge ye/' Nothing 
ought by this to be plainer, obscured and depraved 
as it has been, than the fundamental fact of the 
divine sanctity of the human intelligence, however 
clouded by personal prepossessions or inherited 
traditions; nor of its competency, notwithstanding 
whatever native limitations or unfriendly condi- 
tions may hinder or becloud it, to recognize the 
truth, and to be constrained and transformed by 
its message. 

And so, if the Church is not a teaching Church, 
it does not greatly matter what else she is. She 
may be an institutional Church, with every depart- 
ment of her huge and various mechanism most 
admirably developed ; she may be an authoritative 
Church, with every note in her voice the note of 
an imperial command; she may be an emotional 
Church, with the strain of pathos or of thunder in 
her tones, and the gifts of a many-sided human 
helpfulness in her hands; she will never be a 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Church of power or of leadership, with a divine 
healing and quickening in her touch, until she 
recognizes her calling as a teaching Church, whose 
enduring and unremitting office it must be to 
speak the word of truth, and so to touch the 
springs of life, by that which constrains the will 
and convinces the reason, as to compel the assent 
of that which forever sits upon the throne of a 
human personality — the human mind. 

And so I shall speak to you this morning of 
the Church's office and responsibility as a Teacher; 
and shall ask, and by God's help will endeavor to 
answer the question, how, by what means, through 
the use of what agencies, in dependence upon 
what instrumentalities, shall she discharge that re- 
sponsibility ? And to this question, unless I am 
mistaken, there is a threefold answer: The Church 
is to teach first by a Book, second by a Rite, and 
third by a Life. Let us consider each of these in 
the order in which I have stated them. 

I. And first, the Church is to teach by means 
of a Book. I need not name it. It is the charter 
of her freedom, the storehouse of all her wisdom. 
If the Reformation had accomplished nothing 
else, she would have done her greatest work in 
giving back to men the Bible. We may classify 
nations, distinguish different peoples, differentiate 
different communities or empires in many ways 
— there is one which will at once designate and, 
so far as the convictions in them that are deepest 
and the qualities in them that are noblest are con- 
cerned, will describe them all, and that is, that 
they have, or have not, the Bible. The nations 
[124 J 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

into the life blood of whose thought and faith that 
Book has entered have a fibre, a strain, a quality 
which is distinctly and preeminently their own, 
and whidh no other literature, culture, philosophy, 
ever has produced or will produce. And this 
Book is ours — our heritage and our exhaustless 
treasury ! 

"Is," I hear some one say, "or was? For a 
revising and hypercritical temper, an excessive 
and irreverent curiosity, a vain and unseemly pas- 
sion for processes of dissection, which mean, in 
fact, inevitably and only, ultimate disintegration, 
have practically dethroned and destroyed it. The 
Bible to many modern students of it is no longer 
a Divine Book, or, at any rate, it is no longer so 
exclusively a £)ivine Book, we are told to believe, 
as not to have, anywhere, anything in it that is 
human, errant, of transient significance or of in- 
ferior sanctity. Men have taken away from us 
the old Bible, and we are not greatly curious, a 
good many of us, or greatly reverent of what they 
offer us in its stead. It is all very well for reli- 
gious teachers to tell us to prize and revere the 
Bible; but what are we to say to those learned 
authorities who tell us that the Bible is not an in- 
fallible book, or that every tone and word of it is 
not of equal and infallible authority?" 

Well, my brother who writes or talks or thinks 
in that way, I would say, in the first place, to such 
persons, or to any persons who use such an argu- 
ment to invalidate the authority of such a Book, 
that their very slender premises can never be 
made, to any honest mind, to warrant so large 

[»5] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and loose a conclusion. The conditions of abso- 
lute infallibility in such a Book are ex necessitate 
rei denied to any book that has not been written, 
rewritten, handed down, copied, translated, and 
the like, by methods and under guards and guar- 
antees which no sane man would dream of claim- 
ing for this Book, and which, even if it had had 
them, would not, because they could not, have 
altered the intellectual, moral, social, or racial 
limitations under which the contents of the Bible 
were, in different ages and by a great variety of 
minds, originally given to men. In other words, 
the Bible could not be the Bible — the Book above 
all other books for men — unless it had not only a 
divine, but a large and constantly recognizable, 
because constantly characteristic, human element. 

But that aspect of the question of the attitude 
of our modern mind to the Bible, because of the 
more enlightened apprehension which larger learn- 
ing has given us both as to what the Bible is and 
what it is not, interests me, I confess, far less than 
another and much higher aspect of the whole 
question to which, more especially this morning, 
I desire to ask your attention. 

cc What would you answer," one is sometimes 
asked, "when an honest but perplexed inquirer, 
or even some clever doubter, comes to you and 
says, c Do you know, we get very little encourage- 
ment to take the Bible very seriously from this 
modern theory of its construction. When it was 
God's Book in such a sense that nobody could 
doubt, challenge, or criticise the literal accuracy 
and the supreme morality of every line, of every 

[««] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

incident, of every character in it, that was one 
thing and it was quite a definite thing. But now 
that men have come to tell us that it is the story 
of the religious education of the world, and, there- 
fore, that of necessity it records, in some parts of 
it, the story of very imperfect lives— of a halting 
and often intermittent virtue; of grave moral, in- 
consistencies in those whom we have been taught 
to honor as good men; of imperfect vision of the 
truth ; of dark tragedies of passion and revenge 
— do you ask us to accept such a book as a moral 
guide, or as the disclosure, the revelation, of God's 
mind and way in the world?' " 

I would answer such an inquirer, or doubter, or 
scoffer in some such way as this: 

Yes, I do, my brother, and for reasons which 
are adequate and sufficient, and irresistible. I ac- 
cept the Bible as God's Book, as supremely God's 
Book, in a way unique, preeminent, and incom- 
parable in all the history of the race, for what it 
has brought to man from God and because of what 
it has done for man by God. Listen a moment 
and let me tell you what I mean. 

(a) And in doing so, let me speak first of those 
books of the Bible which recent criticism and in- 
quiry have been supposed most seriously to dis- 
parage, and which that view of them which accepts 
and treats them as literature has been considered 
to have superseded and outlawed. Superseded and 
outlawed ! There never was a moment since those 
books were written when the witness which they 
themselves bear to those august truths which they 
record and reveal was so impressive and so irre- 
l>7j 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

sistible as it is at this hour; and this because the 
ever-widening knowledge of man has never, until 
now, put him in possession of evidence so various 
and so overwhelming of their truth as exists this 
day. 

There was a time, in other words, when, though 
we had the Bible, we had not that acquaintance — 
an acquaintance derived from the testimonies of 
scholars, the discoveries of explorers, the patient 
scrutiny of manuscripts, monuments, religions, all 
round the world — with what men, apart from the 
Elder Testament, believed and worshipped and 
conceived of God that we have to-day. But to-day 
we summon these conceptions of God, these ideals 
of duty, these philosophies and faiths of sages and 
students and dreamers in all ages, and what do 
they give us — or, rather, what are the things that 
they do not give us? 

They do not give us the idea of a single su- 
preme, omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent 
Being as God. The oneness of God is an idea 
utterly unfamiliar to the Pagan mind. And so was 
the conception of God as a moral Being. There 
were gods and goddesses, many and mysterious, 
who in Egypt, India, Greece, as among earlier and 
older civilizations, punished, threatened, smiled, 
frowned, thundered, cursed; but they were, and 
were worshipped, like Astarte and Jupiter and 
Aphrodite and the rest, as vile and as base as the 
poor creatures their images terrified. It was only 
when a Voice cried across the ages : " Hear, O 
Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord," and an- 
other voice answered back across still lengthening 

[128] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

ages, " Be ye holy for I am holy," and, " What 
doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to do 
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with 
thy God? " that there broke upon the mind of man 
the true Vision of God. 

(b) But again : What does the old Book, which 
so many are ready to dismiss as outworn and super- 
annuated, give to us as a portrait of a right and 
righteous social order? Remember the despair of 
those older religions, supremely that of Egypt, to 
which so long the Hebrew was closest, as to man, 
his possible virtue, his redeemable qualities, his 
dormant moral instincts, and read in all those mel- 
ancholy inscriptions along the banks of the Nile, 
which the greatest days of Egypt traced there, the 
Egyptian hopelessness of man, and of the present; 
and then turn to Moses, and see how an Egyp- 
tian slave laid, amid a race of slaves, the founda- 
tions of a new and divine social order which made 
the present world a theatre of man's highest moral 
virtues, and a school for his noblest moral achieve- 
ments. Bishop Warburton, as some who hear me 
will remember, in his <c Divine Legation of Moses," 
argues that the Hebrew religion made no appeal 
to the sanctions of the future, but only to those of 
the present. But even if that pugnacious scholar's 
argument were as conclusive as it is not, consider 
the conclusion to which it would lead us : — that 
here, in Moses, was a man — the first man in hu- 
man history — who freed a race, and founded a 
society, and devised a religion which took human 
society for the first time out of the chaos of passion 
and self-will, and set it on the noble and self-re- 
[129] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

straining and righteous order of the Ten Com- 
mandments! And so, to him who would tell 
us that our Elder Testament is moth-eaten and 
superannuated, a curious palimpsest, a religious 
anachronism, I take my stand on the two tables 
of the law, and challenge human history, in all the 
records of all its religions, to find their equals as a 
foundation, whether for a man or for a race. 

I wish it were possible for me, in the limits here 
permitted to me, to follow this line of thought. 
What is it, men and brethren, that has made great 
the nations whose ideas and whose systems of law, 
government, education, organized social relations, 
to-day rule the world but, more than anything else, 
their recognition of man as free, morally account- 
able, with inalienable rights, and with sacred and 
individual obligations? Go to India, to Burmah, 
to China, to Greece, or to Egypt or to old Rome, 
and see if, anywhere among them all, you will find 
a religion with any other idea of man than that he 
is the mere creature of his governor, his Pharaoh, 
his Sultan, his Rajah, his Pro-Consul, or by what- 
ever name you choose to call him. It was not 
until the religion of Moses came that man became 
a man^ and reverence for the rights of the lowliest 
being was owned as sacred a duty as homage to 
the most august sovereign. 

And are these truths, I ask you, insignificant or 
secondary, or superannuated truths? Are God 
and righteousness, as the supreme concerns of 
human life, and equity, as the supreme right of 
human creatures, familiar and unimportant truths 
common to all religions and present only to the 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

Elder Testament as trickling down to it from 
older and nobler religions? The assertion is as 
false as it is grotesque. It is in no slightest de- 
gree necessary for us to disown what any sacred 
literature — classic, Egyptian, or Indian — pos- 
sesses that is truth in common with the truths re- 
vealed to Israel; but, when you have catalogued 
them all, that matchless revelation stands apart, 
unique, preeminent, incomparable. Their proph- 
ets have thundered and their poets have sung; 
but where, among them all, is any single page that 
will live with those of Isaiah or Habakkuk, with 
the idyl of the Book of Ruth, or with the over- 
whelming pathos of the Psalms of David? 

(c) But the earlier and elder Testament is, after 
all, the least and least precious part of the Bible. 
There is in that Book the record of another and 
later revelation — not of patriarch, or prophet, or 
inspired singer; in other words, not mediately but 
immediately divine, in the person of Jesus Christ. 
What is it that He has brought to men? First, 
I ask you to recognize an entirely new conception 
of the relation of God to men. Take the Egyp- 
tian idea, the Indian idea, the Chinese, or Japanese 
idea (a great Japanese statesman told me the other 
day that religion would be lost to his people, he 
feared, unless they deified the Emperor), and its 
whole conception of God was an exaggeration of 
human brute force, human cruelty, human lust, 
avarice, revenge, greed, pomp, ungoverned self- 
will. And then Christ came. For the first time 
the world saw a Being who ruled all forces, com- 
manded all conditions, swept aside all obstacles, 
[131] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

healed all diseases, constrained the winds and the 
sea to obey Him, and who went about the world 
as a Galilean peasant, with a handful of fishermen 
for His retinue, and the well-side and the hillside 
for His throne! Ah, what hoary falsehoods, in- 
woven for ages with all men's conceptions of the 
Divine, then went down ! Here was One who 
had neither palace nor retinue nor sceptre; who 
<c had not where to lay His head"; who went to 
and fro, teaching, healing, comforting; crushing 
no weakest creature with the cry, "Thou art My 
subject!" but lifting all men everywhere with the 
words, "Ye are My brethren!" — toiling, suffer- 
ing, dying, rising, ascending, for these; and, out 
of the infinite distances to-day calling, as of old 
He called when He stood upon the Mount of 
Olives or the plain of Esdraelon, " Come unto 
Me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest!" 

Such, men and brethren, are the treasures which, 
stored in a Book, the Church calls upon us to 
impart. Never, in all its various history, was the 
Bible, with all the vast accumulations of side lights 
upon its pages, so interesting, so vital, so vitalizing 
a volume as it is to-day. We have been teaching 
it too long by rote. Our methods and our text- 
books are too often outworn and superannuated 
by the marvellous march of modern scholarship; 
our Sunday-school teachers and, alas! I fear, too 
often, our pulpits, are but most imperfectly in- 
formed, and our whole method of teaching, in any 
really large sense of the term, is most meagre and 
inadequate. In this connection I have hailed with 

E»3»] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

most heartfelt thankfulness the noble movement, 
largely inaugurated by our beloved brother, the 
rector of the Church of the Ascension, West New 
Brighton — may the Lord reward him for his 
work! — for the bettering of our Sunday-school 
methods. Our recent conference at the Cathedral 
was an inspiring witness to an awakening recogni- 
tion of the Church's grave responsibility for the 
discharge of her teaching office. May that deepen- 
ing conviction send us — pastors, priests, teachers, 
parents — all alike to our knees, and then to our 
desks, for the gift of faith and for the graces of 
knowledge ! 

II. But again: The Church is called upon to 
fulfil her office as a Teacher, not only by means 
of a Book, but by means of a Rite. There is, 
here, an impressive resemblance between the story 
of the foundations of that new order which came 
into the world in the person of Jesus Christ and 
that great era of moral, spiritual, and social recon- 
struction which we know as the English Reforma- 
tion. The historian is yet to arise who will draw 
that parallel — which must more than once have 
suggested itself to thoughtful scholars — between 
the two periods in the history of the Church which 
marked, respectively, the breaking with the old 
Jewish Order and the breaking, centuries later, 
with the old Latin Order. In the one case, as in 
the other, the ceremonial side of religion had been 
exaggerated until it had become an intolerable 
burden; and in the earlier, as in the later case, 
the dignity and edification of a splendid and stately 
rite perished in the offensive carelessness, or for- 
[ *33] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

mality, or irreverence with which it was per- 
formed. 

And yet it was the infallible note of a Divine 
Reformer, as distinguished from merely human 
reformers, that Jesus did not strip religion bare of 
its ritual or ceremonial side, nor fail to foresee how 
indispensable to the conservation of spiritual 
forces, ideas, beliefs, aspirations, was the rite or 
ordinance which, for all time, would incarnate 
them. The Quaker taught our forefathers that 
even the New Testament Sacraments and Ordi- 
nances were but of temporary and transient au- 
thority, designed to disappear when the Church 
had reached a more spiritual plane. But it has not 
taken Christendom a great while to recognize that 
the fact of the Incarnation is the law of the life of 
the Church. You cannot have a disembodied 
Jesus without His fading soon into a poetical 
myth. And you cannot have a doctrine of dis- 
embodied worship from which the rite, the sym- 
bol, the material element, or physical token, the 
broken bread, the poured-out wine, the washing 
with pure water, the blessing by the imposition of 
a human hand, have all disappeared without the 
speedy vanishing, also, of any moving or con- 
straining power in the forces for which they stand. 
In other words, whatever may be your attitude 
toward Ritual or Ceremonial, religion, constituted 
as human beings are, could not survive without it. 
Not less than the Holy Book is the Holy Rite 
one of the most enduringly sacred instrumentali- 
ties by which the Church must do her work. 

But no sooner is so much said, than it becomes 
[•34] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

necessary, also, to say that this must be with scru- 
pulous respect to (a) authority ; (b), to intelligibil- 
ity ; (c), to edification. There are a great many 
zealous people who are telling us, all the time, 
with much vociferation, that the Reformation 
threw over the wall a great deal too much; and 
that there can be no greater service that we can 
render the Church than, however difficult the task 
may be, to bring it back again. And so we are 
bidden to look just now at those who are earning, 
as we are told, the martyr's crown, by defying 
those who are over them in the Lord, and by 
rending their parishes in twain for an unauthorized 
and inflammatory usage. Mr. Kensitt and his 
like are certainly unlovely and intolerable afflic- 
tions, wherever they may be found (thank God we 
are spared them here), but before we anathematize 
them, we may wisely consider the foolish indiscre- 
tions that provoked them. I account it a subject 
for great joy that in this Diocese we are largely 
free from exaggerations of Ritual, — I wish we 
were free from the occasional discredit of its de- 
fects, — and I may therefore speak with the more 
confidence that no words of mine will be made 
matter of any private interpretation, when I en- 
treat you to recognize, under the three distinctions 
that I have named, — authority, intelligibility , edi- 
fication, — the grave importance of the Church's 
office as a Teacher by means of a Rite. 

(a) In connection with the first of these dis- 
tinctions, due authority, there is, of course, a large 
divergence of construction into which I may not 
enter here. But I would urge that, where one is 
[•35] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

tempted in introducing any rite, or usage, or cere- 
mony, any ornament, or vestment, or posture 
which has no sanction either in the prescriptive 
law of this Church or in the godly judgment of 
the Ordinary, because it is " Catholic," he take 
the trouble to find within how many thousand 
miles — or years I was going to say — his con- 
ception of what is " Catholic " comes to that, e.g., 
of St. Vincent of Lirens, " Quod semper, quod 
ubique" and the rest, before he uses that word 
" Catholic " to club the objector into silence ! 

(b) And so of the intelligibility of variations from 
established ritual. It is not enough that a usage 
is pretty, or novel, or dramatic, or even mediaeval ; 
unless it has not only a meaning but a serious 
meaning — by which I mean a meaning which any 
serious-minded person should regard as worthy of 
consideration and as plainly suggestive, both by 
its form and all its other accidents, of some spirit- 
ual fact or truth of essential import. For where 
the worship of God is so encumbered by elabora- 
tion of ritual as to be unintelligible to a devout 
person who has been born and reared in the 
Church, it has forfeited its right to be perpetuated, 
no matter how ancient the garret from which it 
has been recovered. 

(c) And until a rite is intelligible it is not pos- 
sible to be edifying. That you or I should grasp 
its whole meaning may easily not be possible — as 
who of us would deny in the case of the highest 
of all Rites, the Holy Communion ? — but that it 
should at once and easily establish some point of 
contact with our perceptive faculties, and, above 

[136] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

all, our spiritual cognition — this is indispensable. 
And so we may well be content with modest va- 
riety, with simplicity, and with lawfulness as the 
notes of our ritual use. If we will add to this, 
whether priests or people, the habit not only of 
frequent but of reverent observance, we shall each 
in our lot have lifted this great teaching agency of 
the Church to its rightful place. Many of those 
to whom I speak have seen great ecclesiastical 
functions, in great ecclesiastical places — Canter- 
bury, St. Petersburg, Rome, or Constantinople. 
How vividly we remember their stately pageantry, 
their splendid trappings, their glittering altars, 
their thronging functionaries, and the like; and 
yet I venture to say that, in some quiet country 
Church, in the modest and reverent presence, 
bearing, speech, and gestures of some little-favored 
but faithful parish priest we have participated in 
a Rite which, for the high note of a devout and 
self-forgetting observance which dominated the 
whole, was more glorious and more uplifting than 
them all ! 

III. But no teaching by a Book or by a Rite 
can for one moment claim precedence of the eter- 
nally paramount importance of teaching by Life. 
It is of a significance, just here, not always ade- 
quately recognized, that, in the order of Christ's 
own teaching, the teaching of the Life took this 
precise precedence. It is impossible, I need not 
say, to belittle the enormous significance of what 
Christ taught; but it is just as impossible to ignore 
the method by which He taught. To an age 
which had largely lost, or never had possessed, a 
[■37] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

just and adequate conception of God ; of the eternal 
righteousness ; of truth as the basis of conduct, He 
came, first, as the Divine Expositor of that Truth 
by a Divine Life. First of all He lived among 
men, not above them, not aside from them, not 
reserved from them; and the first adequate con- 
ception of the Truth broke upon that sorrowful 
and sin-burdened world to which He came, with 
what He was and did, rather than what He said, 
as He went to and fro among them. What He 
said, as we know, at first perplexed, startled, and 
sometimes angered them. But what He was, that 
they read in letters "writ large and plain." And 
though, to the last, His truth sometimes failed to 
persuade, to convince, to constrain, the time came 
when what He was and did and bore, broke down 
the last barriers of human hostility and swept away 
the last remnants of human doubt or distrust. 

We greatly need to come back to a fact like this, 
especially in hours like these. As the Church has 
gone on through all the ages, widening her con- 
quests, and, above all, multiplying and perfecting 
her human mechanisms, she has inevitably incurred 
the peril of losing sight of the fundamental fact 
that her power of winning souls to Christ is not, 
and never can be, in these, so much as in that 
supreme and resistless spell which not only pro- 
claims the truth, but lives it! Our words men 
may misread; but our acts are, sooner or later, 
intelligible and significant to all men. What is 
to-day the glory of our Reformed Christianity but 
that Sainthood is not the note of an exclusive order, 
not alone the distinction of the cloister and of the 
E'38] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

cell; but that all along the history of the world, as 
preeminently in its domestic history, there has been 
in low places and in high places, alike in the cottage 
and in the palace, the soft and radiant splendor of 
Christian living, pure and true and steadfast, in all 
stations and under all conditions, and making all 
men see and own that Christ is still in the world 
in the lives and service of His disciples even as 
He was in it when He abode among men in the 
flesh ? A ministry that has grasped and is daily 
making real this fact is doing more for the advance- 
ment of God's kingdom among men than all the 
learning and genius and energy that have wrought 
in the Church from the day of Pentecost until this 
hour ! I recall at this moment an experience of 
a single day during the past year, in three rural 
parishes of this Diocese, which I shall cherish as 
among the most precious of my whole life. As I 
drove away from them, one after the other, there 
came to take leave of me leading laymen of the 
parish, who said to me, in one instance, " God has 
given us here, sir, a priest whose life does more for 
Christ in this community than any other influence 
that touches it." In another, cc We are growing 
stronger and more united and more self-sacrificing 
every day, and it is our Pastor's life that has taught 
us how." And in still another, cc God has sent us 
a good man to minister to us, and his blameless 
and beautiful life is preaching to us all the time." 
Could there be any testimonies more significant or 
more inspiring than these ? 

The world is waiting, believe me, in all its misery 
and hopelessness, for the lives — lives lived by 
C J 39] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

clergy and laity, men, women, and children alike — 
that shall provoke them more and more unto love 
and to good works. Not laws, not emotional Re- 
vivals, not the multiplication of orders, societies, 
guilds, fraternities, of whatever name or sort, can 
do for Christ in His world what you and I can do 
for Him if we are willing to live His life, and bear 
His cross, and do His will. We may despair of 
the Church, of the family, of the Republic; and 
yet, in each of these, there is the seed of the nation's 
regeneration if once those who compose them will 
set about seeking and striving for the things that 
make for the transformation of conduct and the 
witness of character. On the other hand, no re- 
forms will ever come, no triumphs for God that 
will be worth the winning will ever be won, unless 
all that we strive to do, whether in our personal or 
our social and civic relations, is ennobled and 
illumined by what we are. I hear, from time to 
time, as I presume you do, the note of despair as 
to the family, the Church, the city, the nation; 
and the eager question, "What shall be done to 
make better the things that are bad and wrong?" 
Believe me, the question is not so much what we 
shall do, as what first of all we shall strive to be, and 
in how blameless and self-forgetting a spirit we 
shall grapple with the demon of evil, whether in 
our own hearts or in any of its manifold forms out- 
side of us. Just now the pessimistic note to which 
I have referred is loudest within our own municipal 
borders, and the prophets of disaster are many and 
confident. Men and brethren, if we go to perdition, 
whether as a community or as a nation, it will be 
[ Ho] 



TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH 

because you and I and others like us are too fine, 
or too lazy, or too self-seeking to care to make the 
protest, and do the work, and be the men and 
women that will prevent it ! I am not so despairing 
of my kind as to believe that of the few hundreds 
of thousands or millions of people who make, e.g., 
the voters of this metropolis or this Republic the 
majority are not in favor not only of good laws, but 
of a righteous, clean, and honest administration of 
them. But if, of those majorities, the greater 
number are too engrossed with private interests, too 
impatient of distasteful tasks, too sensitive of oblo- 
quy, or personal antagonisms, too money-loving 
or self-indulgent to concern themselves with guard- 
ing what our fathers won for them, we shall lose 
it — and shall deserve to lose it! There has gone 
to his rest since I last spoke to you here a citizen, 
not of our Communion (I mean the late Mr. Dor- 
man B. Eaton), who, as an example of spotless 
character as a man, and of heroism and almost 
martyrdom as a citizen, deserves to be commemo - 
rated in some enduring monument far more than 
a good many people whom we are likely so to 
honor. Who of us here, who were citizens of New 
York on that dark night when he was stricken 
down by the appropriate bludgeon of some myr- 
midon of the ring that then ruled us, will forget 
the thrill of horror with which every right-minded 
man and woman among us resented that infamous 
outrage? But it never chilled the brave man's 
patriotism; it never stayed his fearless hand or 
voice; most significant of all, it never soured or 
embittered his fine and high-bred chivalry of aim 
[ H 1 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and purpose, nor, when health and strength came 
back to him, cost us or any good cause one hour 
possible to him for unselfish service or courageous 
speech ! 

It is in such examples that we learn what faith 
in God can do in making of our humblest gifts a 
righteous life for God and man. To-day the 
Church of Jesus Christ waits for such lives as wit- 
nesses, as beacon-lights, as, of all others, the 
mightiest and most resistless forces for the advance- 
ment of His kingdom on earth! 

Ours be it then to awaken to our threefold 
stewardship clergy and laity alike, as teachers in 
the family of Jesus Christ, through Book and Rite 
and Life ! God has given us the tools with which 
to build His kingdom. May His Holy Spirit fill 
us with the wisdom and courage to use them! 



TEMPERANCE 



A CHARGE 
DELIVERED TO THE CONVENTION 
OF THE DIOCESE OF NEW YORK 
SEPTEMBER 24, 1902 



TEMPERANCE 



Men, Brethren, and Fathers: 

THE law of this Church binds upon me a 
duty 1 which, though now rarely observed, 
I still feel to be a definite obligation; and in its 
performance I shall ask your attention this morn- 
ing to a Charge upon the subject of Temperance. 

I do this because I regard the Church's attitude 
to this subject as of primary and preeminent im- 
portance, and because I hold that she is in the 
world as the guardian both of Faith and of Morals. 
I do it, also, because there is, I believe, at present 
existing wide-spread misapprehension on this sub- 
ject, and, what is worse, wide-spread apathy. This 
last is worse, I think ; because, oftener than other- 
wise, it is the result of serious inquiry and wide 
scrutiny, both which have issued in the conclusion 
that the subject is one concerning which good men 
and women are bound to differ, and concerning 
which — for this is the gravest aspect of the whole 
business — their differences are of no consequence. 
As well might we say that the differences about 
the organization of the Family which exist, e.g., 
here and in Salt Lake City, or Constantinople, 
are of no consequence; and that clear and true 
views of duty do not affect conduct. We know 
1 See Digest, Canon 1 9, Title I, § ix. 

C'45] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

better than that. We know that you cannot found 
a state upon an order which is false to the mind 
of God and the Spirit of His Divine Revelation ; 
and we ought to know that where these have dis- 
closed themselves, as they have by the voice of 
Prophet, Apostle, and Martyr, it is at the peril of 
souls — our own and other men's, for whom, in a 
greater degree or less, we are also to answer — 
that we disregard them. When the great Apostle 
to the Gentiles stood before the Roman Governor 
Felix "he reasoned," we are told, of "temper- 
ance," as well as of "righteousness " and " a judg- 
ment to come." The Greek word, as you will 
remember, is iyKpareias, of which the Latin 
equivalent is continentia, and there is no doubt 
that it is self-control of every kind which the 
Apostle has here in mind; as, undoubtedly, it 
is true that temperance is not only of one kind 
nor consists in self-control only in regard to one 
appetite. But as little is it to be forgotten that, 
over and over again, as in those memorable 
words, " Be not drunk with wine wherein is ex- 
cess, but be filled with the Spirit," the New Testa- 
ment very plainly warns us against a danger which 
is even more our danger than theirs to whom, 
originally, the Apostolic warnings and Epistles 
were addressed. The Christian Church has un- 
doubtedly wasted much energy, and well-inten- 
tioned Christian people are still wasting much 
activity, in the pursuit of methods and maxims 
concerning the drink-habit which have earned for 
them the ridicule, if not the resentment, of reason- 
ing and reflecting people; but those of us who 
[1+6] 



TEMPERANCE 

judge such persons harshly are often willingly 
ignorant of situations and incidents which are 
peculiar to our modern civilization, and which 
have, and had, no parallel in Oriental times or 
customs. Let me make my meaning here quite 
plain. If the dangers from drunkennesss had 
been as great or as imminent in the tropical coun- 
tries in which the first Missionaries of Christianity 
lived, and to which they wrote, as they are in 
ours, I believe that their language would have 
been much plainer and stronger, though I believe 
they would not have departed from the wise law 
by which they were governed, which did not lay 
down rules, but which enunciated principles. For 
modern life in New York is not ancient life, 
whether in Jerusalem or Antioch. The modern 
strain of bread-winning is not, at any rate with us, 
the easy task of earlier or later tropical existence. 
With our conditions, in other words, have arisen 
a whole family of perils of which the men and 
women of St. Paul's time could have little or no 
knowledge. We resent, alas ! — most of those to 
whom I speak this morning — as an intolerable 
impertinence a reference to these conditions, as 
though they were all of a nature for which we 
were in no wise responsible, and to which we could 
bring no amelioration ; but, in fact, no one who is 
reaping the benefits of any single one of the 
achievements of our twentieth century civilization, 
has a right to do so without asking himself the 
question, what are modern cheapness, and in- 
vention, and machinery, and all the multitude of 
inexpensive conveniences which make my life so 
['47] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

different from the life of my forefathers — what 
are these things costing — not the employer who 
produces them, nor the tradesman who sells them, 
but the mechanic who makes them? And, how 
can I judge him whose task is so narrow, so con- 
fining, and so monotonous, if, now and then, he 
"evens up," as he says, and introduces a little 
variety into life by getting drunk ? 

" Well, we cannot blame him" say a large body 
of sympathetic and serious-minded people, cc and 
so, rather, let us blame those who put temptation 
in his way, and who furnish him with the means 
to drown, for a little, his reason in the lethe of 
drink." We have had, and still have, as I pointed 
out not long ago, a school of reformers who had 
excogitated, at this point, a definite philosophy of 
responsibility which, since then, has found its echo 
in denunciations and in legislation equally impo- 
tent and futile. Mr. John B. Gough was the father 
of this school of reformers, whose shibboleth is 
that the drunkard is a victim and not a transgres- 
sor ; and who, in consistent forgetfulness of the 
Apostolic maxim that " every man shall bear his 
own burden," have undertaken to create for us a 
new earth, if not a new heaven, by penalities which 
strike at the man who sells an intoxicant rather 
than at the man who buys and drinks it. Let us 
not seem to underestimate the responsibility of him 
who, whether for pleasure or for profit, "putteth 
a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his 
brothers way." 1 That this is both real and grave, 
he only can doubt who has come to doubt all moral 

1 Rom., xiv. 13. 

[, + 8] 



TEMPERANCE 

standards, or to believe that one can divorce any 
part of his life from those obligations to love and 
safeguard one's neighbor as one's self, which are 
fundamental to the mind of Christ. But the 
mischief of much of our modern philanthrophy, 
in this connection, has been that, in recognizing 
a common obligation, it has minimized those pri- 
mary obligations which are not common but indi- 
vidual. The Apostle is careful to marry to that 
great precept," Bear ye one another's burdens and 
so fulfil the law of Christ," that elementary and 
eternal condition of human existence that " every 
man shall bear his own burden." It is in vain, 
therefore, that, in the administration of human 
laws which deal with vice or crime, it has been 
common for the judge, or the jury, to take into 
account, and to make allowance for, the inebriated 
condition in which the offender committed a crime. 

The human conscience, more unerring in its de- 
cisions, often, than the fallible mechanisms which 
are the product of an artificial civilization, de- 
mands, " Whose act was it that chose to take the 
drug or the dram which produced this state of so- 
called unconscious irresponsibility?" and to that 
question the law, or the jury, or the judge who 
conspired to shield the culprit must give a valid 
answer, or accept the responsibility of the act which 
they condone. 

It was not unnatural that, confronted by such 
questions as these, an unreflecting public sentiment 
should have taken refuge in legislation which, if it 
refused to face the issues which it raised, brushed 
them aside with sweeping enactments, which, at 
['49] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

one blow, proposed to destroy a traffic which it 
could not control. Nothing could have demon- 
strated more clearly the utter failure of that at- 
tempt than the hysterical and vituperative denun- 
ciations with which the disclosure of that failure 
has been met. In this connection the association 
of the principle of local politics, whether municipal 
or national, with that of prohibition has notes which 
are alike pathetic and alarming: pathetic because 
it reveals how weak they may be whose great place 
forbids that they shall speak the truth as they know 
it; and alarming because it discloses to us how 
little representative, under the dominion of this 
cowardice, are even the best minds among us. 

It is such a situation as this, my brethren of the 
Clergy and Laity, which makes your duty and 
mine to-day so plain. If mere enthusiasm, often 
blind, and oftener partisan and one-sided ; if repre- 
sentatives of the law, in its executive or adminis- 
trative acts ; if the law itself, as the expression of 
a great popular movement — if all these together 
are unequal to the abatement, or at any rate to the 
banishment, ofan evil so great as that which, in this 
connection, afflicts our land and our people, then, 
surely, it remains to those who believe supremely 
in the presence in the world of Divine forces and 
influences, which of all others make most poten- 
tially for righteousness, to arise and strive. For 
myself, I do not believe that such forces have been 
asleep, or that their results may not be traced. I 
remember very well the profound impression pro- 
duced upon my own mind by the statements of an 
able and experienced physician, to whom, when on 



TEMPERANCE 

the way, some time ago, from one appointment in 
the interior of this diocese to another, I put the 
question, " Tell me whether, in this region of 
country, with which, as a physician, you have been 
familiar for more than a quarter of a century, you 
consider the drink-habit more or less prevalent?" 
His answer at once was, " Far less prevalent. 
When, a quarter of a century ago, I arrived in a 
village, and left my horse at the village tavern, I 
was expected to take a drink at its bar with every 
man who asked me; and had I refused to do so, 
should have been regarded as a churl or a snob. 
I am not now even asked to do so ; and if I were, 
and were to accept, such an act would be con- 
sidered discreditable both to my personal stand- 
ing and my professional character." 

Such an incident is of value because it discloses 
what has widely come to pass in our land, and 
what has often a very misleading influence upon 
our judgments. When we were a homogeneous 
people, an hundred years ago or more, our drink- 
ing habits were far more convivial and excessive 
than they are to-day; but this is only to say that 
people who had brought with them certain tradi- 
tions of indulgence, and especially certain usages 
of hospitality, strove to maintain them, and to 
pass them on their children. But we are no 
longer a homogeneous people, and while it is quite 
true that the usages in houses in which you and I 
are at home are much simpler and less indulgent 
than were the drinking usages of our ancestors, it 
cannot be pretended that this is true of the larger 
life of to-day, or of great masses of people for 

[«5i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

whom, whether we like to recognize it or not, you 
and I are in some fashion responsible. 

"Who are they?" is it asked? I answer that 
I am not now referring to that class of imported 
citizen whom, if we accept at all in this land, it is 
curiously enough asserted that we must accept 
with all the idiosyncrasies as to drink, and the 
times, and manner, and measure of consumption 
of it, that he has brought with him. For myself, 
I have never acquiesced in any such loose and 
essentially licentious dogma, nor will I. It is 
entirely competent for a republic to make its own 
liquor laws ; as it is for it to make any other laws. 
If to any they are distasteful, then the impulse 
which has brought so many out from under the 
yoke of other distasteful laws, in other lands, may 
take them back again. " I thought this was a 
free country," exclaims the foreigner, sometimes, 
brought up suddenly by some severe restriction to 
which he happens to have been unwonted. No, 
my son ! There can be no such free country as 
your words imply, unless it be a country of un- 
bridled license; and that would have in it the seed 
of its own speedy doom. If, in this land, there 
are restrictions, it is because they are for the 
greatest good of the greatest number. 

But here a question inevitably arises which un- 
derlies the whole discussion, and that is the ques- 
tion, "What is the greatest good of the greatest 
number?" It is impossible to look on the face 
of human society, it is still more impossible to read 
human history, and not recognize the fact that 
that which makes a great people or a great man 
[>5*] 



TEMPERANCE 

is the presence and the power of a great ideal, and 
that no mere rule can take the place of an ideal, 
even though it be the rule, e. g. y of total abstinence. 
Now, then, the history of the enforcement of a 
mere rule has wrought in the temperance reform 
precisely what it has wrought in every other great 
movement — it has produced formalists, but it 
has not been fruitful in virtue. It is not neces- 
sary, at this late day, to produce the evidence of 
this, for at last the facts have become so notorious 
that honest men have ceased to challenge them ; 
but if any one of us is in ploubt on the subject I 
desire to commend to him the pamphlet of Mr. 
Albert Griffen of Topeka, Kansas (which Mr. 
Griffen will send him accompanied by a Total 
Abstinence Pledge), entitled, An Earnest Appeal 
for the Substitution of Christian for Pagan Meth- 
ods in all Moral Reform Work. Says Mr. Griffen 
in this pamphlet: "Not long ago, a prominent 
and estimable prohibitionist (in Kansas) said, c If 
any one wishes to send to Kansas City (which 
is in the State of Missouri, across the river 
from the State of Kansas, and not subject to the 
Prohibitory Law of the former), and get a case of 
beer for his own use, I have no objection. What 
I want is to close the open saloon?" Now, I am 
not quoting this incident to indicate the depravity, 
duplicity, and essential dishonesty of the person 
whose words it recites. I am not sure that we 
may justly impute any of these things to him ; for 
it is one thing to object, altogether, to a particular 
traffic, and quite another to object to certain fea- 
tures, characteristics, or conditions of that traffic; 

[■53] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and the misfortune of those who are advocating 
prohibitory laws, whether they are to be applied 
to Sunday or week-day usages, is that in their 
zeal for one object, and that a very good object, 
they fail to recognize the influence of their 
methods upon the minds of those who look at a 
subject less microscopically and more widely and 
largely than they do. It cannot be denied — the 
hysterical and abusive denials which one sees or 
hears only furnish to a philosophic mind the 
stronger evidence for the thing denied — that the 
growth of the consumption of substitutes for things 
against the use of which prohibitory laws are 
aimed, has risen side by side with the prevalence 
of those laws; and the observation and published 
statistics of medical men in States where such laws 
have obtained, opens a chamber of horrors into 
which I have no heart to ask you to enter. 

Indeed, the wonder is that that chamber does 
not grow more appalling and more revolting every 
year. Modern life, it must be owned, does not 
grow easier, or less anxious, or less exacting. I 
recognize, gladly, all that our modern civilization 
has done to ameliorate its conditions, and in some 
cases to lighten and abridge its tasks. But it must 
be owned that, like the freedom of the Roman 
Captain in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, 1 
" with a great sum have we obtained this freedom." 
Urge as one may — and can — the gain in much 
that makes for refinement and leisure in the life 
of the modern toiler, especially in rural and com- 
paratively simple environments, you cannot segre- 

1 Acts, xxii. 28. 

['54] 



TEMPERANCE 

gate such an one from the more heated and 
strenuous life that throbs in cities, and to which 
sometimes, nowadays, we are bidden, as though 
its strenuous quality had some special note of 
virtue in it. Our modern life, as ordinarily con- 
stituted, has nothing of the sort. It is singularly 
adapted, whether it is lived in towns or villages, 
or among fields and forests, to promote restless- 
ness and discontent, to make us less and less satis- 
fied, in the rare and wise words of our catechism, 
" to do our duty in that state of life to which God 
has called us," and more and more eager to break 
out of it — to bring the great majority of people, 
in other words, under conditions in which restless- 
ness and impatience are the dominant notes in 
their lives. 

And what is the product of it all ? You do not 
need, men and brethren, to have me tell you that 
it is a widespread discontent which threatens our 
whole social structure. Wealth is unequally dis- 
tributed, we are told, and the sophistries that are 
born of envy and hatred are hawked about the 
streets to inflame, in a land which refuses to 
enthrone any class above another, the passions of 
the less clever, or thrifty, or industrious against 
those who are more so. At such a moment and 
under such conditions our prohibitory laws, 
whether we put them in operation on one day 
only, or on all days, are as stupid as they are 
ineffectual. Under a system of government that 
boasts that it knows no privileged classes, we cater 
to them at every corner, and the club, the hotel, 
the fashionable restaurant furnishes for a dollar 
['55] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

what the wearer of a fustian jacket with his five or 
ten cents cannot even venture to ask for. And 
yet this is a system which we defend in the name 
of our Puritan forefathers and our primitive tra- 
ditions. I often wonder, if they could come back 
and see our changed conditions, what they would 
say to it ! 

" Well," do I hear some one say, " are we to 
understand from this that your judgment is that 
all law, in the matter of the indulgence in intoxi- 
cants, should be abrogated, and that a great com- 
munity such, e. g., as this should be left on 
Sundays and week-days alike to unbridled indul- 
gence ? " No, I have never held to any such 
view as that, nor have argued for it. No sane 
man can be in any doubt about the enormous 
dangers to our modern life of the drink-habit. 
Toward the changed conditions of that modern life 
I have already glanced in passing ; and no one of 
us can be wholly unaware of them. I have lived 
in this city nearly forty years, and I cannot pre- 
tend that, in any calling in which one is set to 
earn his bread, such a task is as easy as it was 
forty years ago. What we gain, or seem to gain, 
at one end, we lose, or seem to lose, at the other. 
To sum up the whole situation in a statement 
which can hardly be disputed, the individual seems 
to me increasingly to count for less. The other 
day, in another country, I saw a cash register, in- 
vented, I believe, and patented in our own, that 
not only notes sales, makes change and delivers 
it, but completes also the entry of the purchase, 
records the whole transaction, and delivers to the 

[156] ' 



TEMPERANCE 

buyer a receipted bill. Now, the feature in this 
whole ingenuity, noteworthy and clever as it cer- 
tainly is, which must needs interest a very large 
number of people, is the employee, or the two or 
three employees, that disappear out of the shop 
with the introduction of this invention. They 
may have been doing their duty with scrupulous 
and unwearied fidelity, and their employer — but 
at this point I hear some one exclaim, "Hold on 
there ! They have no employer. They are work- 
ing for a corporation, and they never see or treat 
with anybody but a department manager." Very 
well, then ; the department manager knows that they 
have been honest and faithful; but no matter ; they 
must go, because the machine will work cheaper 
than they can; and they go — where? to what? 

Well, they do not go to sleep, or to play. They 
must live, and it may be that like Erskine, when, 
a young and untried barrister, he stood before the 
Court of Appeals in the House of Lords and said, 
u My Lords, I am sensible of my audacity in 
standing here; but, my Lords, I have felt my 
children plucking at my skirts and crying, c Father, 
give us bread V" — like him, I say, these may have 
felt children's hands plucking at their skirts and 
have heard children cry, " Give us bread," And 
if they do, and if, seeking in vain for a task and a 
wage, men and women strive for a little to dull 
the keen edge of their despair, and to drown by 
narcotics or intoxicants the horror of their help- 
lessness, is our only resource such legal enactments 
as shall make their mischievous self-indulgence 
more furtive and more adroit? 

C'57] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

"Well, really," do I hear some one say, "this 
is the most extraordinary appeal for the abro- 
gation of good laws that I ever listened to, most 
of all from the lips of a Christian Bishop ! Are 
we to be told that the conditions of our modern 
life are such that the only alternative for those of 
us who abhor — and rightly abhor — a drunken 
society and a bacchanalian Sabbath, is to repeal 
all laws which seek to discourage the one, or to 
repress the other?" Most surely not ; but we do 
need to have it shown to us that the remedy for 
evils which we all alike deplore does not lie along 
lines which hitherto we have followed; but de- 
mands a much wider outlook; a much wiser 
method ; and, most of all, a much more constant 
personal service than any that, hitherto, we have 
rendered or even contemplated. Let me speak of 
these things in the order in which I have named 
them. 

And, first, let us strive to recognize the fact that 
the present situation in the matter of the drink- 
habit demands of those who propose, in any wise, 
to deal with it, a much wider outlook than has 
hitherto been our wont. It has been our wont, I 
think, to attribute the drink-habit mainly to two 
causes, the convivial instinct and an inherited 
appetite. I would not under-estimate either of 
these, but I am persuaded, as I have already indi- 
cated, that these causes account, as a matter of 
fact, for a very small percentage of our widespread 
and prevalent inebriety. Our times have, in this 
particular, created their own perils; and they are 
perils which threaten both sexes and all ages, and 

[•58] 



TEMPERANCE 

which, in many cases, may not be evaded. Un- 
doubtedly it is true that, so far as ordinary usage 
and habit are concerned in the matter of intoxi- 
cants, the standards in many departments of life 
are higher than those of our ancestors. But when 
I am reminded that many — the majority, I pre- 
sume — of railway corporations will not employ a 
man who drinks, and when this is quoted to me 
as a great advance in the standards of the present 
as compared with those of an hundred years ago, 
I wonder whether I am called upon to remind 
this boaster that one hundred years ago there were 
no railways, and therefore no situation pertinent to 
such a comparison. The illustration is an appro- 
priate one, just at this point; for it recalls to us 
the multitudinous ways in which the civilization 
of our fathers was unlike our own ; and how there 
has come into being, in our own time, a whole 
group of situations new, exacting, and, most of all, 
exhausting. In a word, the very conditions of 
life itself have changed ; and if men, and especially 
women, are to face and master the problem of life, 
many of them honestly believe that they must 
have an occasional surcease from care, to which, 
whether it is furnished by whiskey or opium or 
some other equivalent stimulant or narcotic, they 
believe that they must turn. I wonder whether 
any of those to whom I speak happen to have 
read the defence of the importation of opium 
recently published by an English physician. Let 
me say at once that I am not referring to it to en- 
dorse it, to commend it, or, in any way, to approve 
of it; but simply to submit it as testimony at 
[>59] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

once dispassionate and, so far as its details were 
concerned, scrupulously reserved, to the effect 
that, on the whole, modern life in modern lands 
was impossible save as, somehow, the strain and 
stress of it were ameliorated by the use of agencies 
which made its exactions less incessant and less 
exhausting. 

Observe, I am not urging the competency of 
such specialists to prescribe for the disease which 
they diagnose. I am simply calling attention to 
their diagnosis as a matter with which, in connec- 
tion with the whole drink-question, we must needs 
be concerned. Is it true that the tasks of the 
bread-winner, the daily wage-earner, who make up 
the vast majority of our human kind even under 
the most advanced forms of our civilization, are 
more exacting and more monotonous than those of 
their predecessors ? For myself, I have no slight- 
est doubt of it. Society rises, indeed, with a mar- 
vellous swiftness and efficacy, to respond to the 
cry for help for those who cannot work at all; 
but the case of those who can is not, I think, 
made easier, but more difficult, as the days go by. 
We progress steadily and splendidly in the fertil- 
ity of our inventions; but, as the cleverness and 
adroitness of machinery rises, the demands upon 
the cleverness and adroitness of the workman 
diminish. And yet they cannot diminish without 
leaving his task more circumscribed, more me- 
chanical, and more monotonous. Do we know 
how mechanical and monotonous, at last, it may 
become, and do we know what a mechanical mo- 
notony at length takes out of a man? For, until 
[160] 



TEMPERANCE 

we do, we are in no position to judge our brother 
who, at the end of his day's task, turns to stimu- 
lants or narcotics which to us may be abhorrent. 
His home and yours — have you ever compared 
them? His leisure and yours, his environment 
and yours, his food and the conditions of its prepa- 
ration, his recreations, companionships — in one 
word, his resources, and yours — do you know, 
not how like, but how utterly unlike they are? 
And yet, when you talk to this brother man, you 
are surprised, it may be, to find in him tastes and 
sympathies and aspirations not unlike your own ! 
What chance have they, and what warrant have 
you and I, for criticisms, behind which has been 
no single effort to better the habits which they 
assail, or the conditions out of which those habits 
have sprung ? 

You will gather from all this how superficial, 
how utterly inhuman, inconsiderate, and unreason- 
able, I regard a great deal of that doubtless often 
well-intentioned zeal which seeks to make men and 
women virtuous and temperate by a law of indis- 
criminate repression. I do ! I do ! and if I am 
sent here of God for nothing else I am sent here, 
men and brethren, to tell you that ; and to entreat 
you to discern that most of our methods for dealing 
with the drink-evil in our day and generation are 
tainted with falsehood, dishonored by essential un- 
reality, and discredited by widespread and consis- 
tent failure. There is a drink-evil; and you and 
I must not ignore it. There is a task for Christian 
men and women, just here, to perform, and you 
and I must not shirk it. But let us begin by 
[16.] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

trying to recognize the facts, and then let us strive 
to deal with them in a way worthy of their por- 
tentous significance. 

And this will require on our part a frank recog- 
nition of certain situations of which here I can 
only speak briefly, but concerning which I dare 
not be silent. 

(a) The life of men is necessarily largely passed 
in their homes; and whatever mechanisms we have 
devised for bettering the conditions, or varying the 
monotony, or widening the resources of the poor 
man's home, have had, as a rule, this defect, that 
they touched only one or two members of such a 
home and habitually neglected the woman, who 
must forever be the centre of it ; and who, in the 
homes of the poor, is oftener than otherwise the 
prisoner most closely confined and hardly worked 
of all. Do you know, now, what will bring largest 
relief and sunshine to such a toiler ? Miss Octavia 
Hill, who, with a splendid heroism, and a patience 
that was simply divine, led the way in the vast 
reforms in structures which are a resplendent note 
in the modern London home for the working-man, 
has shown us how a great many constructive and 
sanitary improvements in such buildings have been 
neglected or abused by those for whom they were 
provided, because they involved, in their care and 
administration, a considerable increase of vigilance 
and labor. The illustration is of value because it 
makes plain to us that no ascent from primitive 
and animal-like modes of living can be made 
without an expenditure, whether of mind or of 
force, which, upon a very tired man or woman, 
[:6z] 



TEMPERANCE 



makes a demand which they will shirk if they can. 
I presume that you and I would, if we were in 
their place ; — and such facts indicate the lines along 
which beneficence must needs move, if what we 
reckon as progress is not to have the inevitable 
tendency of driving men and women out, and not 
beckoning them into their homes. <c I belong to a 
club — to three or four of them," says a man of 
sufficient income not only to pay his dues at the 
club, but to equip what he calls his " den " at home ; 
"but I spend most of my evenings under my own 
roof;" and this disciple of domesticity beams upon 
you with an air of conscious virtue, and cries out, 
" Shut up the saloons, Sundays and week-days, too, 
if you can. The place of the working-man is in 
his home!" And he knows as much about the 
working-man's home as he does about the rabbit- 
hutch on an Australian farm ! 

(b) I have no leisure here to discuss the questions 
of food and recreation as I should wish to do in 
this connection. The growth, in our America, of 
life in hotels ; the vast number of your friends whom 
you recognize when you go yourself to a good 
restaurant, whether in an inn or in a club; the 
throngs that, night after night, fill every place of 
amusement in the land ; and the steady tendency, 
in all considerable communities in the United 
States, in places of amusement^ to be no more, and 
to aspire no higher; — these are facts which, when 
we lay them side by side with the lives of those 
who form the great majority in the communities 
in which most of us live, have a profound and tragic 
significance. "We want a more strenuous life," 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



cry a certain school of philosophers among us. 
Well, men and brethren, it is just those whose 
tasks grow, daily, more exacting, and whose labor 
is, if not more incessant, more monotonous, who 
are among the chief patrons of places and indul- 
gences that we regard as most evil. A young 
friend of mine who was, I am proud to say, a can- 
didate for Holy Orders in this Diocese, told me 
that he and his wife, not long ago, had spent their 
summer in town, and had devoted themselves to 
furnishing recreation and social relaxation to two 
classes of persons — bank clerks and car-drivers. 
"But why those two?" I asked. And the dis- 
cerning answer was, " Because they struck us as tied 
to tasks that were both irksome and monotonous. " 
There was a fine discernment here, which the 
Christian Religion and the Church of God must 
bring to bear upon all our social problems if they 
would solve them. 

In the considerations which I have thus far 
urged will be found, I think, the grounds for that 
wider outlook to which to-day we are called, as 
well as the reasons which have made it impossible 
for me to feel any very keen interest in contro- 
versies which have raged all around us, and which 
concern not alone this city, but every town, and 
village, and hamlet in the land. We have been 
trying to fit old laws to new conditions; and then 
we have railed against the law-maker on the one 
hand, or the executive on the other, because the 
laws and those who administered them so poorly 
realized our ideals. Believe me, we shall have to 
go a good deal deeper than that! The law, it 
[.6+] 



TEMPERANCE 

should be remembered, under such a system of 
government as ours emanates from the people, but 
our civic situation makes it possible for us to be 
under the authority of laws which are in no sense 
the expression of the people who must obey them. 
Here in this city we are ruled, as to some of the 
gravest interests that affect our well-being, by a 
law-making body that the largest charity cannot 
erect into a competent or sufficiently informed 
judge of our moral or social conditions; and if we 
venture to say so, ignorance and insolence revenge 
themselves upon our criticism by giving the screw 
of the law another turn, that we may " know our 
place and keep it ! " Our Republican, or Demo- 
cratic, system of government has never been put 
to a severer test than that to which it has been 
subjected in this commonwealth, when a legislature 
enriched by neither our best brains nor our widest 
experience has, with an audacity as smug as it was 
vociferous, made laws for the second city in the 
world, and insisted that it knew better what that 
city needed than the city itself could know! I 
protest, we are not a community of thugs or bum- 
mers ! For myself, I should be perfectly willing 
to submit every Sunday law that we have — what- 
ever traffic it regulates or represses, on whatever 
sacred day of the week — to a vote of the people 
of the town who have a right to vote; confident 
that every hallowed interest would be protected, 
and that the day of unbridled license which so 
many so confidently foretell would never dawn. 
We are not a godless and dissolute mob, waiting 
to pour scorn upon those great ideas and beliefs 

['65] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

in which the founders of this Republic laid its first 
stones; and if there is a condition of things among 
us, — if we have inherited restraints and limi- 
tations which are not common to the oldest and 
best-tested civilizations in Christendom, — then 
we are not Pagans because we challenge them ! The 
times call for a great many things ; but for nothing 
louder than for an intelligent and fearless discrimi- 
nation ! 

And this for no other reason so much as because, 
by a great number of our wisest and best citizens, 
various methods now being employed in this coun- 
try to diminish or restrict the drink-traffic ; to 
present to the public counter attractions to the 
saloon; to place the sale of intoxicants entirely and 
exclusively in the hands of the civil authorities ; 
and to increase the cost of the manufacture or the 
sale of everything of the kind, so that it shall cease 
to be the profitable business that it undoubtedly 
is in many instances to-day — all this is now being 
attempted, and is wise and well as far as it goes. 
As far as it goes, I say, for no one can deal can- 
didly with the facts in the case without owning that 
each and all of these expedients has gone but a 
very little way — and seems likely to ! 

It was, therefore, with a very keen and sympa- 
thetic interest that I listened, last spring, to a state- 
ment made by Earl Gray to a few persons at the 
City Club, in this metropolis, on the Temperance 
Problem in Great Britain, and the latest and by 
far the most promising movement of which I have 
heard for grappling with it. The situations in the 
two countries are not identical, and the methods 
[.66] 



TEMPERANCE 



to be employed in dealing with them are not and 
cannot be the same. But one or two facts are true 
in each case, and these, as it happens, lie at the 
bottom of the whole business. 

One of these is that the saloon or the gin palace, 
whether it exists here, or in Liverpool, or Man- 
chester, has for its most determined enemies those 
who never use it, and, as a rule, know nothing 
about it. I doubt whether their assaults upon it, 
and their pictures of what its influence has been 
and is, have ever had the slightest effect upon those 
whom they aimed to reach. Men and boys have 
been won away from the saloon, but it has been 
by methods of which Messrs. Rowntree and 
Sherwell tell in their admirable volume, The 
Temperance Problem and Social Reform^ which I 
commend to every one who hears me as incom- 
parably the most valuable contribution which re- 
cent times have given us to this whole discussion. 1 
" I was visiting," says the present Bishop of Lon- 
don, then Bishop of Stepney (I am quoting from 
the volume to which I refer), " in the London 
Hospital, and found myself sitting by the side of 
a broken-legged publican. When he heard who 
I was, he began asking about the welfare of several 
of our club members." (The Bishop had been 
Warden of the Oxford House Settlement, in Beth- 
nal Green, whose men's clubs have a total mem- 
bership of 950, and an average nightly attendance 
of 475.) " I asked him," said the Bishop, <£ how 

1 The Temperance Problem and Social Reform. By Joseph 
Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 
1 901. 

[ l6 7] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

he knew these club members of mine." " Oh," 
he said, <; they were regular customers of ours be- 
fore they joined your club; I had a public house 
down your way," 1 In other words, the public 
house furnished something to these youths, and 
they went there for it; the time came when they 
found elsewhere what they cared more for, and 
then they went where they could get that. 2 

And though Settlements, whether like Oxford 
House, or Toynbee Hall, or anything here, or in 
Boston, or Chicago, which have striven to grapple 
with the drink problem, have not yet solved it, 
they have pointed steadily in one direction as fur- 
nishing its solution, and as indicating the methods 
by which we may reach it. It is in vain that you 
tell the working-man that the saloon is evil, until 
at least you are honest enough to recognize that 
there are features of it that are not evil, and that, 
as often as otherwise, those are they which he most 
of all prizes, and oftenest turns to. Again, it is 
in vain that philanthropy — or at any rate philan- 
thropy as feeble, as intermittent, and as unintel- 
ligent as is much of that which has, thus far, grap- 
pled with the drink problem — attempts such 
measures of reform as simply emphasize the evils 
which they seek to fight. Two or three facts 
must be plainly recognized and candidly dealt 
with before we can even make a beginning. 

One of these consists, as Lord Gray told us, in 

1 The Temperance Problem, etc., page 581. 

2 The Rev. J. E. Freeman, its president, advises me that the 
Club using the Holly Tree Inn in his parish has between 1 , 1 00 
and 1,200 members, and often 300 working-men in one room ! 

[.68] 



TEMPERANCE 

a clear discrimination between conditions with 
which, unlike as are those of an American city to 
those of a European city, both alike must reckon. 
For example, one kind of man goes to a saloon 
to get an intoxicant, and for no other reason. 
Another goes there for any one of half a dozen 
purposes: refreshment; amusement; companion- 
ship; information; physical easement; business 
appointment, or mere change ; for which last you, 
my brother, go next door, or to the club, and 
which all sensible people regard as wholly inno- 
cent. Now, then, the strength of the saloon- 
keeper has been in keeping the supply of these 
different wants together. The wisdom of those 
who antagonize him will be in separating them. 

This the great Public House Movement in 
England has done. If you want gin, or rum, or 
whiskey, or any intoxicant, you must go to a place 
where these are sold by corporate authority, and 
utterly without profit to the individual who sells 
them. If this individual can sell you instead tea, 
milk, coffee, or some other harmless beverage (if 
there is any harmless beverage) he will share the 
profits of the sale, and at the end of the year the 
village, or town, or city will share it still more 
largely; so that already there are towns in Eng- 
land that have been lighted with electricity, pro- 
vided with a park, a music-hall, or some other sub- 
stantial form of recreation, out of a traffic which 
steadily diminishes the sale of intoxicants, and 
increasingly promotes the health and recreation 
of the people. 

I have no space here to go into the merits of 

[i6 9 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

this really great scheme — the first, I think, in 
modern times that, in recognizing a situation, has 
dealt with it in a really great way. It opens vistas 
of further progress, along which all the training 
of these modern days is educating us to advance. 
This is the age of great capitalistic combinations; 
and after railing at them or denouncing them, 
according to our more or less imperfect lights, a 
great many of us come to see that, on the American 
principle of the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber, more than one of them that we have been 
railing against most vehemently is a cheapener of 
production, and so, in the long run, a friend to 
the poor. I wonder that it has never occurred to 
the Temperance Reformer to attempt a reforma- 
tion by conversion and not by annihilation. Be- 
hind the modern saloon-keeper, vicious as he may 
be, and evil as may be his traffic, stand a great 
multitude who regard their rights as invaded when 
he is attacked, and yet not one in five of whom 
would not own that his business is largely mis- 
chievous in its effects, and almost universally de- 
teriorating in its tendencies. Are these irredeem- 
able? Is the whole incapable of transformation? 
Are they only demons or robbers who are engaged 
in it? Suppose, for a moment, that the same 
genius that has touched and transformed great 
industries should band itself, for a little, to under- 
stand that great Temperance Movement which 
to-day is going on, on the other side of the Atlantic, 
and to bring to its inauguration among us the best 
brain and the most generous use of capital in the 
land : would such a movement be without material 
[■7o] 



TEMPERANCE 

as well as moral rewards ? On the contrary, I be- 
lieve that the one would surprise us as much as 
the other; and that what I saw last summer, night 
after night, in the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen 

— how I wish I could reproduce that charming 
and altogether healthy and attractive scene here ! 1 

— might become a part, and that a typical part, of 
our summer life in this great city ! No, no, let him 
doubt or falter who will ; we have come to recog- 
nize great evils, and a great degradation, in our 
present mechanisms of refreshment and recreation 
in America. Our next step ought to be — nay, 
it must be — that cordial unification of the forces of 
brain, of wealth, and of energy with which we may 
recreate, transform, and ennoble them ! 

And this brings me to the final word on this 
whole subject which I would leave with you. 
There is a marked tendency in much of the organ- 
ization of our modern life to eliminate the indi- 
vidual, or to reduce him, in the vast mechanism of 
our social fabric, to be a mere cog in a wheel, which 
revolves without much reference either to his pre- 
dilections or his inheritance, and this, curiously 
enough, is called " the higher civilization/' Its 
relative value and its possible mischiefs open too 
vast a field for our discussion here, but certainly 
it is a pertinent question to this occasion and to 
this place to ask, <c What had Jesus to say to such 
a conception of human society ? " If its divinest 

1 After the Charge was delivered, I learned that the founder 
of this garden was the father of one of our Clergy — the Rev. 
Mr. Carstensen — and that the fellow -citizens of this wise Dane 
had erected his statue in a public square in Copenhagen. 

[>7i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

conception was one that annihilated human free- 
dom, and absorbed the individual in some vast 
mechanism which minimized personal responsibil- 
ity, then we ought to find some trace of such a 
society in the New Testament ; but we look for it 
there in vain. And since then, whether we look 
at the Assumptionist Fathers in France, or at the 
history of such a fellowship as that of the Shakers 
in our own land, we look in vain for any faintest 
warrant for believing that the development of vir- 
tue consists in the annihilation of personality. On 
the contrary, the thing of paramount interest about 
the Four Gospels is that they are so largely the 
story of the way in which a Divine Life touched 
and influenced human personalities. It is in vain 
that we strive to harness Jesus Christ to our great 
modern movements by showing how He organized 
men, and articulated machinery, and multiplied 
local associations. He did nothing of the sort, 
and if one says that He did not do it because He 
left it for His Apostles and disciples to do when 
they went about planting and organizing churches, 
the answer is that, in what these said and wrote, 
as with their Master, the prevailing note was not 
that of a mechanical organization but of spiritual 
truth, forever appealing to the personal conscience 
and the personal will ! 

And to that which was the prevailing character- 
istic of the first preaching of the Gospel, I believe 
we must to-day return in all our strivings for re- 
form. We are seeking to achieve reforms by legal 
enactment ; but cc what the law could not do," says 
the Apostle, fC the Spirit of Jesus Christ," speak- 

[«7»] 



TEMPERANCE 

ing to the individual soul and the personal power 
of choice, " can do, and does do." Go back and 
read the history of the great Washingtonian Move- 
ment ! We have forgotten all about it, now, but 
I can remember its triumphs in my childhood, 
and they were the triumphs of personal interest 
and service; — unwearied watchfulness, untiring 
patience, inextinguishable hope, watching, per- 
suading, leading, lifting, forgiving, encouraging, 
and forever loving, which at last conquered, eman- 
cipated, and redeemed ! Ah, what triumphs after 
this fashion I can recall at this moment, where one 
woman has been will, and purpose, and vigilance 
untiring ; her whole life overflowing with tender- 
ness into the other's until that other has staggered 
at last to his feet again, and with a child's self- 
distrust, and a man's strength of purpose, has 
fought his way back at last to blameless living ! 
Oh, my brother, my sister, my daughter, my son, 
somewhere in you God has shut up this strange 
power of influencing some other, and of redeem- 
ing some other life sold under its base dominion 
to a base appetite, so that at last it shall be free ! 
We may make laws until there is no part of life 
that their restrictions do not cover, and then we 
may sit down and wait to see them do our work 
and redeem our brother man ! Believe me, we 
shall wait in vain ! As Jesus put forth His hand 
and touched the leper, so must you ; and as His 
look recalled the erring Peter to His side, so must 
yours ! The world waits, we say, for better laws 
— or for better men to administer the laws ! No, 
my brother, it waits for love — the vigilance of 
[ J 73] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

love, the service of love, the sacrifice of love ! 
The whole moral sense of the community is con- 
gested with theories of Temperance Reform, 
which have in them every note of excellence but 
that of personal service — and that, if once we can 
be roused to it, will be worth them all ! 



[i74] 



THE POWERS AND THE 
POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 



SERMON 

PREACHED ON SAINT MATTHIAS'S 
DAY, FEBRUARY 24,1885, IN ST. JOHN'S 
CHURCH, DETROIT, MICHIGAN, ON 
THE OCCASION OF THE CONSECRA- 
TION OF THE REVEREND GEORGE 
WORTHINGTON, D.D., AS BISHOP OF 
NEBRASKA 



INTRODUCTORY 



THE history of the Episcopal Church in the 
United States would be very imperfectly 
told if it did not record the remarkable services 
of its missionary Episcopate. The exigencies of 
sparsely settled regions in the West and South- 
west, where the Church was largely unknown, and 
where without a supporting constituency it was 
impossible to organize dioceses, made it necessary 
to provide for an oversight and administration 
which should also unite with it much of the work 
of the pioneer and the missionary. To this end, 
in the year 1835, tne Church chose its first mis- 
sionary Bishop, the gallant and lion-hearted Kem- 
per, and sent him to be Bishop of Missouri and 
Indiana. His jurisdiction in fact included almost 
the whole Northwest, and for nearly twenty years, 
and until elected Bishop of Wisconsin, he gave 
himself to his work with contagious and undis- 
couraged enthusiasm. 

Bishop Kemper was the first in a succession of 
missionary Bishops who have been among the 
best gifts of the American Church. Among them 
have been Scott of Oregon, Randall of Colorado, 
and their like, in earlier days, and Lay and Robert 
Elliott and their like, in later, all now gone to 
their reward, while among the living are men to 
['77] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

whose wisdom, energy, and self-sacrifice tne Church 
will find itself increasingly indebted as the years 
go on. 

Among these it is no disparagement to others to 
say that the name of the first missionary Bishop of 
Nebraska, Dr. Robert Harper Clarkson, will always 
stand preeminent. Of border ancestry (he was 
born in 1826, in Gettysburg, Pa., near the Mary- 
land line) Dr. Clarkson united in himself the vigor 
of the North and the sunny charm of the South. 
Of gentle birth and lineage, a college-bred man, 
with a sincere love of letters, he was always and 
everywhere a man of the people, and he was able 
to unite in himself the most unbending loyalty to 
the traditions of the Church, whose son he was, 
with the kindliest and largest sympathies toward 
all sorts and conditions of men. In its early his- 
tory in the West the Church had no easy task. It 
found itself in communities which were usually 
not so much hostile to it as good-naturedly con- 
temptuous or indifferent. It was almost utterly 
unknown, and its historic claim, to those bred of 
Puritan ancestry, or with equal disesteem and dis- 
taste for any other than a highly emotional type 
of religious teaching and worship, presented, prac- 
tically, almost no points of contact. It was the 
calling — no easy one — of the missionary Bishop 
and his clergy to create these — to establish the 
entente cordiale, and then by means of it to make 
men love the Church and her services because 
they had learned to love and trust the men who 
brought them to them. 

In this work Bishop Clarkson was a prince- 
[>78] 



INTRODUCTORY 

Bisnop, certainly not because of the state in which 
he lived or traveled, — the Apostle who was a 
tent-maker was hardly more familiar with hard- 
ships than this his true successor, — but because 
his nobility of speech and service won upon all 
to whom he came. The present Diocese of Ne- 
braska, with its Cathedral, Churches, and schools, 
is his worthy monument; and when, all too soon, 
the time came for one who had worn himself out 
in the service to rest from his labors, he left a 
large and strongly rooted work behind him. 

To succeed him in the charge of that work the 
Diocese of Nebraska called, in the year 1885, a 
man who was like-minded ; and it was the happy 
privilege of one who had known him in his earli- 
est ministry, and who had learned then to recog- 
nize his earnest and devout character and his fervid 
missionary spirit, to preach on the occasion of his 
consecration, on Saint Matthias's Day, Feb. 24, 
1885, in St. John's Church, Detroit, Mich., the 
sermon which here follows. It is noteworthy that 
since then the Diocese of Nebraska has become 
two jurisdictions, over the larger and newer of 
which a missionary Bishop has been placed — the 
successor of Bishop Clarkson, the Right Rev. Dr. 
George Worthington, still continuing Bishop of 
Nebraska. 



[ *79] 



THE POWERS AND THE POWER 
OF THE EPISCOPATE 

IN entering upon the task which has been 
assigned to me this morning, I may not refrain 
from recognizing the obvious inappropriateness, 
from one point of view, at any rate, of my attempt- 
ing to discharge it. Whatever may be fitting on 
other occasions, it would seem as if there could be 
little difference of opinion as to what is fitting 
here. It belongs to age and experience in the 
Episcopal Office, and not to comparative youth 
and inexperience, to inculcate those lessons which 
are appropriate to this hour and to those august 
solemnities to which we are in a little while to 
proceed. It belongs to a large and varied Episco- 
pal service to tell the people what are the duties 
and responsibilities of the Episcopal Office, and to 
tell this, our brother elected, how best he may 
discharge them. And in length of service and in 
largeness of experience your preacher is equally 
poor. Himself a novice, called little more than a 
twelvemonth since to take up those large tasks 
which to-day are to be laid upon another, he might 
well have come here, not to speak, but to listen, 
content to remember that, as always in the college 
of the Episcopate, so here preeminently, it is the 
office of "them that are elders" among us to teach 
and to admonish. 

[ '8° ] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 



But if I had not been constrained by the force 
of that triple command which has been laid upon 
me, by our venerable and beloved Presiding 
Bishop, by the Bishop of this diocese, and by our 
brother this day to be consecrated, I might ven- 
ture to remind myself of a usage of our Mother 
Church in connection with occasions such as this, 
not without advantages which might make it 
worthy of imitation among us. The preacher at 
the consecration of a Bishop in the Church of 
England is not a bishop, but a presbyter; and the 
custom has at least this merit, that it affords op- 
portunity for setting forth the office and work of 
a Bishop from a standpoint without, rather than 
within. Doubtless they best know the duties and 
obligations of a Bishop's Office who have long 
borne them, and the most intelligent standing- 
ground in judging of any calling and its respon- 
sibilities is not without, but within. Yet, as in 
other things, so here it must needs be of advan- 
tage, sometimes at any rate, to look at the office 
and vocation of a Bishop as those look at it who 
stand apart from it, not as unfriendly critics, but 
as friendly and filial observers. 

It is in this spirit and with this purpose, then, 
that I venture to ask your attention. Pray, with 
me, that another Wisdom than my own may guide 
and restrain and enlighten me ! 

In the tenth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, 
at the first verse, and in the first chapter of Saint 
Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, at the sixth 
and seventh verses, there occur respectively these 
words : 

[i.8i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

" And when He had called unto Him His 
twelve Apostles, He gave them power." 

" Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that 
thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee by 
the putting on of my hands. For God hath not 
given to us the spirit of fear; but of power, and 
of love, and of a sound mind." 

There are two views of such an occasion as that 
which assembles us to-day, equally familiar, if not 
equally accepted. The one is that an office-bearer 
in the Church of God who has been tried and 
tested in an inferior post of duty is to be advanced 
to a higher, and that, in connection with such pro- 
motion or advancement, he is to be clothed with 
new dignities and entrusted with new powers. In 
this view, the analogies of secular life and civil or 
municipal office-bearing occur at once to our minds. 
Here is a servant of the State, who, by the suff- 
rages of his fellow-citizens, or the appointment of 
the executive, has been chosen to some responsible 
office. As he comes to its threshold there are 
certain ceremonies of initiation, or some formal 
oaths and declarations, by which he is to become 
legally qualified for his new place and admitted to 
its duties. All through our civil and military sys- 
tems of government, and wisely, there runs some 
law or usage looking to this end and providing for 
its accomplishment. Yesterday our fellow-citizen 
was only our fellow-citizen, and no more. To-day 
he has been chosen, it may be, for some high and 
honorable office. To-morrow, perhaps, he will take 
the oath of his office and enter upon the discharge 
of its duties. And in doing so there will come to 
[182] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 

him the right, not merely to draw his salary and 
to assume an official title, but to exercise certain 
powers which are inherent in the nature of his 
office, or have been conferred upon it by enact- 
ment of law. He may appoint certain subordi- 
nates, he may veto certain proposed enactments, 
he may pardon certain criminals, and in the exer- 
cise of all these powers he may be largely, if not 
solely, responsible to himself, to his own con- 
science, and only indirectly to his coadjutors in 
the business of government, or to the people. 

Now, it is undoubtedly true that there is a very 
close analogy in many respects between powers 
thus conferred and those with which our brother 
is to be entrusted this day. The Church is in the 
world as an organization; as a Divine organiza- 
tion, it is true, and with obligations not so much 
secular and legal as they are moral and spiritual 
— but still, as an organization. Not as a disem- 
bodied spirit, but as a visible kingdom or society 
is it bidden to go forward to its work. And in 
this organized and visible society there must of 
necessity be those who administer its laws and 
confer its authority and execute its discipline. 
There must be office-bearers, as well as an office 
to be borne. There must be those who commis- 
sion, as well as those who are commissioned. 
There must be overseers, as well as work and 
workers to be overseen. And in all these various 
functions and relations there must be a right dis- 
tribution of responsibility, and a law of due sub- 
mission and subordination to duly constituted and 
rightful authority. 

['83] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

And hence there arises, the moment we come 
to speak of the Episcopate, the question of its 
powers. We cannot admit the existence of such 
an office as that of a Bishop in the Church of God 
without admitting also that along with the office 
there must go a certain definite authority and cer- 
tain specific powers. If we believe (as most surely 
we do believe, or else we have no business to be 
here) that the office is not one of human inven- 
tion, but, howsoever gradually, as some may 
believe, taking on its more definite and specific 
form, of Divine origin and institution, then we 
must needs believe that, as in the beginning the 
Divine Founder of the Church gave to His 
Apostles certain inalienable powers, so He has 
willed that something answering to these powers 
is to remain with those who shall come after them. 
They were to set in order the things that remained 
unorganized. They were to ordain elders in every 
city. They were to set apart those others who 
were to serve tables. They were to confirm the 
souls of the baptized by the laying on of hands. 
They were to decide questions of worship and of 
discipline, not alone, indeed, nor without mutual 
counsel. They were to serve, but they were also 
to rule. They were to preach, but they were 
also to commission others to preach. In a word, 
over all that infant energy and activity of the new 
faith, they were to be iTria-KOTTOi — overseers — 
leading and governing, ordaining and confirming, 
correcting and restraining those whom Christ and 
His Church had entrusted to their care. Such, 
in brief, were the powers to be exercised, all of 
[184] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 

them, let us never forget, under the guidance and 
inspiration of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy 
Ghost, with which the Master clothed His first 
Apostles ; and such are the powers of those who 
to-day, however unworthy, are in a very real sense 
their successors. 

And if we ask, Where now are we to look, in 
this our own age and Church, for a more specific 
definition of these powers ? the answer is, to cus- 
tom, to canon law, and supremely to the Holy 
Scriptures. Some things are matters of usage, 
others are defined by precise enactment of canon 
law, and behind all these is the voice of the Holy 
Ghost as it speaks to us from the pages of the 
New Testament. When in the book of the Acts 
of the Apostles we read how, to the Church at 
Antioch, " The Holy Ghost said, separate me Paul 
and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called 
them," we get a clear and explicit point of depar- 
ture, in the light of which we may read all that 
follows. As, step by step, the little handful of 
believers grows and multiplies and disperses itself 
abroad, as that expectant company in the upper 
room is enlarged till it becomes a fully organized 
and aggressive Christian society, we see how, step 
by step, the new powers were ordained to match 
the new responsibilities, and how the freedom and 
informality of an earlier and cruder condition of 
things gave place to one in which, as with the 
deacon and presbyter, each had his separate work 
and was clothed with his several powers ; so with 
that other, who, father and brother to all the rest, 
was set over them in the Lord with the heavy 
[■85] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

burden, but no less with the definite powers, of 
the Episcopate. 

And yet, when we have said all this, and I think 
you will own that I have striven to say it with 
entire candor and explicitness, is it not true that 
there remains something more to be said? We 
turn back to that first commission of which we read 
in the words just quoted to you from Saint Mat- 
thew's Gospel. And what a significant picture is 
that which it summons before us ! The men who 
were commissioned there were bidden to do the 
mightiest works which the world had ever seen : 
" Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils, 
raise the dead." This was their Lord's command. 
Well, as we know, they obeyed it. Up and down 
that slumbrous, sin-burdened world of theirs they 
went and preached, and wrought, and healed. And 
all the while it was not their powers — canonical, 
ecclesiastical, Episcopal — that made them strong, 
but their power. " And when He called unto Him 
His twelve Disciples He gave them power." I 
do not forget that the word in the original means 
more precisely " authority" ; but there could have 
been no real and constraining authority if there 
had not been behind it a human personality thrilled 
through and through with a divine and irresistible 
power. And so, when we turn from the commis- 
sion of Christ to the twelve to that other commis- 
sion of the aged Apostle to the Gentiles to his son 
in the faith, Timothy, we see that in substance and 
spirit the two are one : " Wherefore I put thee in 
remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God 
which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. 
[186] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 

For God hath not given to us the spirit of fear ; 
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 

Men and brethren ! The powers of the Epis- 
copate are one thing ; the power of the Episcopate 
is quite another. Need I say that I do not forget 
that, in every Episcopal office and function, the 
presumption is that that which is done is done 
under the guidance, and in submission to, the 
teaching and moving of God the Holy Ghost ? 
But alas ! it does not need much reading of history 
to remind us that men may be admitted into the 
highest offices of the Church of God, concerning 
whom it is not too much to say that nothing in 
their lives or teaching gave any smallest evidence 
that they had so much as heard whether there be 
any Holy Ghost ; and while we may well rejoice 
that such dark pages in the Church's life belong 
mainly to its past, we may not forget that in every 
age of the Church, and in every office of the 
ministry, there has been a tendency to confuse its 
powers and its power — to mistake the assertion 
or the exercise of the one for the mighty and 
transcendent spell of the other ; in one word, to 
mistake that which is in the voice of authority for 
that which is the far mightier constraint of exam- 
ple, of wisdom, of love. 

It is a mistake which we cannot too strongly or 
too strenuously deprecate. A Bishop may not 
verily forget that which is due to his office (though 
he can very well afford not to be over-sensitive as 
to that which is due to himself), and he may as 
little disesteem or neglect those duly regulated 
powers which the Church has put in his keeping, 

[187] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

not to rust, but to use. But he may wisely re- 
member that the frequent assertion of prerogative 
is the surest road to its resistance ; that even the 
solemn dignity of the Episcopate may easily be in 
danger of the "vain conceit of officialism"; and 
that the genius of an ecclesiastical martinet is the 
last spell with which — in an age when, whether 
rightly or no, men cannot be hindered from read- 
ing and thinking for themselves — a Bishop may 
attempt to conjure. 

On the other hand, there is a power of the 
Episcopate, real and mighty and lasting, and it is 
the power — 

(a) First of all, of personal character. The phrase 
may sound indefinite, but I think you see with me 
what it stands for. In every other relation of life 
there are men who are influential for good, not 
because they have been lifted to a great place, but 
because they fill a great place, as they would have 
filled a smaller one, with a substantive, stainless, 
and righteous manhood. They are known to 
speak the truth, and to live it, as well as to speak 
it. They are known for their constancy to duty, 
and to do it at every hazard. Whatsoever things 
are pure and honest and lovely and of good report, 
they not only think on these things, but daily and 
habitually illustrate them. They fill their place in 
the world, not in a spirit of self-seeking, but in 
large-hearted love and sacrifice for the welfare of 
other men. They are not swerved from the right 
by the clamor of any partisanship, or the sneer of 
any critic. Day by day they lift their lives into 
the clear light of those eternal moral sanctions that 
[188] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 



stream from the throne of God, and strive to live 
them in that light. Infirmities of temper, errors 
of judgment, imperfections of intellectual attain- 
ment they may have ; but all that they are and do 
is ennobled by a lofty purpose and adorned by a 
stainless integrity. And these men, wherever you 
find them in any earthly community, are preemi- 
nently its men of power. The multitude may not 
follow them, but it secretly trusts and respects 
them. Their fellows may not applaud them, but 
they do profoundly believe in them. And when 
any crisis comes — when truth falleth in the streets 
and equity cannot enter — these are the men to 
whom the world turns to restore its lost ideals of 
truth and goodness and righteousness, and to lead 
it back to the light. 

And what is true of men in every other relation 
of life is true of that sacred office with which we 
are concerned to-day. Verily, in him who is to be 
a Bishop in the Church of God, we want a sound 
and adequate and (it cannot be inappropriate to 
these days to remember) a many-sided learning, a 
strong and clear faith, a steadfast and burning zeal ; 
but first of all and before all, as the soil in which 
these and all other kindred graces are to flourish, 
we want a strong and substantive personal char- 
acter. 

(b) But again: the power of the Episcopate 
resides, I submit also, in a judicious admixture of 
the paternal and fraternal spirit. In a letter of 
Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, written to the 
presbyter whom Christendom knows as Jerome, 
there occur these words : "And indeed, I beg that 
[* 8 9] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

you would, from time to time, correct me when you 
see plainly that I need it. For although, according 
to the titles of honors which the usage of the 
Church has now established, the Episcopate is 
greater than the Presbytery, yet in many respects 
Augustine is inferior to Jerome, though correction 
from any manner of inferior ought not to be avoided 
or disdained." Ah! with what a spell of power 
must he have taught and ruled who could so empty 
himself of merely official superiority to one who 
was still his brother. If clergymen have, ordi- 
narily, any one sentiment of which they would, I 
confidently believe, most eagerly be rid, it is that 
difference of ecclesiastical rank puts an end to fra- 
ternal intercourse. That fatherly relation between 
the bishop and his presbyters, which is one of the 
most beautiful and gracious things in the organic 
life of the Church, would be a far mightier power 
if it could always be brightened and warmed by 
another relation not so much fatherly as brotherly. 
There is a frank and generous confidence, there is 
a cordial and willing dependence, there is a wise 
distrust of one's own judgment, there is a deference 
to another's opinion, which are signs, not of weak- 
ness, but of strength. And in and through all 
the often sad and painful business of administering 
reproof or discipline, or conveying admonition or 
dissent, it is possible to weave a golden thread of 
loving brotherhood which shall at once transform 
and illumine the whole. "Rebuke net an elder, 
but entreat him as a father, and the younger men 
as brethren." Inspired words, indeed, which may 
we never consent to forget! 

[ r 9°] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 

(c) Once more: the power of the Episcopate 
will be found to consist, I think, not a little in its 
open-mindedness. It is a misfortune of that training 
which one acquires in parochial duties, that it rarely 
involves a collision with minds that view what may 
be called "burning questions" from other stand- 
points than our own. The man who is called to 
the Episcopate is usually one who is summoned 
from the care of a large and well-organized city 
parish. But such parishes are usually made up of 
those who are drawn to a particular ministry by 
their sympathy with its views and modes of thought. 
And a minister thus environed by a congenial and 
like-minded people encounters little that educates 
him to recognize the existence, even, of other 
opinions than his own. He hears of them, reads 
of them, it is true; but oftener than otherwise it 
is apt to be through the medium of books and 
periodicals written or edited by those in sympathy 
with his own views. From such a training he 
emerges to deal, it may be, with men, many of 
whom are his peers in learning, years, and intelli- 
gence, and whose rights within the Church are no 
less than his own. To recognize those rights and 
to be just to them is no easy task. To remember 
that the Church is a church and not a sect, a whole 
and not a fragment, Catholic before all, and there- 
fore not Anglican, or Evangelical, or Protestant, 
merely — this is something that belongs preemi- 
nently to one who would exercise the true power 
of the Episcopate in days like these. I would not 
be misunderstood here, and I will not be. For 
that loose-jointed optimism which accounts one 
[■9i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

man's credo as good as another's ; which disregards 
or disesteems the sacred obligation of the Church's 
historic formularies ; which forgets that before the 
life that is to be lived there is not only a faith, but 
the Faith to be kept, I have the scantiest respect. 
But we may not forget that, as in Apostolic days 
there was the Pauline and the Petrine presentation 
of the truths of the gospel, and in later days the 
theology of a Clement of Alexandria on the one 
hand, and of an Augustine on the other, so ever 
since then there have been those great schools of 
thought and opinion in the Church, neither of 
which I believe may wisely exist without the other, 
and to welcome whose activities a wise Bishop may 
well desire that he may have that breadth of vision 
and that openness and candor of mind which shall 
freely acknowledge their right to be, and if so, their 
right to think and to speak. 

(d) There is one other element of power in the 
Episcopate which, though I name it last, may well 
be accounted the first and chief of all. It is 
consecration — the unreserved devotion of one's 
whole powers, soul, body, and spirit, to the work 
of his high office. It is for this that our brother 
is here to-day, and that fresh gift of himself to 
God, which we ask of him in these solemn services, 
it is his to make day by day through all the months 
and years of service that are before him. It is for 
this that we ask for him the sevenfold gifts of God 
the Holy Ghost, that, quickened by that mightiest 
Power, he may keep nothing back from the service 
of Christ and His Church. Happily a bishop in 
our branch of the Church is largely emancipated 

[ *9*] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 

from those claims, partly of the State and partly 
of what is called " society," which press upon him 
in other lands. But none the less is he in danger 
of that secular spirit which spends itself in matters 
of secondary importance and is engrossed in details 
of mere worldly business. It is true that even a 
bishop may not unduly neglect these; but to hold 
himself to his high office as a chief shepherd of the 
flock is he preeminently called. And this calling 
he can hope to fulfil only as he brings his gifts, 
his office, his powers, day by day to the feet of his 
Master, and by the surrender of self-will, by that 
hearkening of the spiritual ear which listens for the 
voice of God, by a spirit of unselfish devotion 
which shames the careless and the idle in his flock, 
by love unfeigned, and by a meekness and patience 
that are not merely long-suffering, but inexhausti- 
ble, shows himself to be possessed by that new 
manhood, that regenerated heart and will, which 
shall enable him to say, "Not I, but Christ who 
dwelleth in me!" 

Such are some of the elements of power in the 
Episcopate, There are others, but I may not 
stay to enumerate them, nor do you need that 
they should here be recapitulated. They cannot 
altogether take the place of outward authority, of 
canonical provisions, empowerments, and the like, 
but, breathing through them all, the Spirit behind 
the form, the purpose above the commission, they 
are, I think we must own, the spell and secret of 
mightiest influence and most enduring work. 

It is such power that I pray may be yours, my 
brother, as you take up the tasks and burdens 
['93] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

that are to-day to be laid upon you. If I do not 
congratulate you on assuming them, it is not 
because I do not thank God that you have been 
called to the office of bishop, nor because I do 
not rejoice that the Church is to have in that 
office the benefit of your ripe experience and your 
earnest and devout Christian character. But I 
know your work here, and how dear it must needs 
be to you ; and I know, even better than yourself 
can yet know, what it will cost you to go out from 
this people to the homeless and lonely and ever 
anxious life and work of a bishop. As I stand 
and look back upon your ministry I cannot but 
remember that it has been richly and singularly 
favored. From the days when you and I were 
striplings together, working side by side in that 
eastern city where you in your diaconate and I in 
the earlier years of my priesthood learned to prize 
one another's friendship, all the way on to this 
hour, yours has been the privilege of ministering 
to those who were united and devoted in their 
attachment to yourself, and in their love and 
loyalty to the Church. Coming here as the suc- 
cessor of the gifted and saintly Armitage, you had 
indeed no easy task ; but this large and united 
congregation, its varied and beneficent activities, 
the rare and unwearied band of Christian laymen 
whom you have drawn around you or held to you, 
the respect in which you are held in this com- 
munity and in this diocese by all your brethren, 
the love and honor of your bishop (who gives you 
up to-day I know well how reluctantly), — all 
these testify to the faithfulness of your service 

[ *94] 



POWERS AND POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE 



and to its abundant fruitfulness. And can I con- 
gratulate you that you are called upon to leave 
such a flock and such a work ? Can I hide from 
myself or from you that you are going forth to 
labors which will grow larger every day, and to 
cares and anxieties that will multiply and not 
diminish as the years go by ? Ah, could we 
summon him whom you are to succeed, and 
whose resplendent path of service you are to 
follow, to speak to you of your work, do we not 
know the tone of pathos which would come back 
into that matchless voice of his as he recounted to 
you how "in journeyings often, in perils in the 
wilderness, in weariness and painfulness, besides 
that which came upon him daily, the care of all 
the churches," he had laid those broad and deep 
foundations on which henceforth you are to build P 
No, my brother ; it is a word of sympathy rather 
than of congratulation that springs to my lips 
to-day, though I am not unmindful of the noble 
field and opportunity which open before you. 
But I do thank God that he has called you to 
this office, and that, in the face of its large anxie- 
ties, you have so much to cheer and support you. 
The unanimity with which your brethren in 
Nebraska have called you to be their bishop, and 
the earnestness with which they have repeated 
that call have, verily, left you no choice ; and 1 
am persuaded that when you go to them they will 
show you by their welcome and their coopera- 
tion how eager and steadfast is their purpose to 
strengthen and sustain you in your work. 

And do not forget that behind them will be 

[«95] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

the flock from whom you are parted to-day. The 
work of the Church in Nebraska will have a new 
meaning henceforth, and a very precious one to 
them. Their hearts go with you, and so, thank 
God, will their prayers and their alms. It is thus 
that out of our sorrows and partings comes the 
enlargement of our love and our sympathy. As 
you go to Nebraska remember, then, that your 
going will help to enlarge the heart of this people 
and to widen the horizon of their highest interests 
— inspiring thought, which makes their loss their 
gain as well, and which transfigures your new 
burdens and responsibilities into a sacred privilege ! 

My dear brother, may God make you sufficient 
for these burdens, and when you are weary and 
heavy laden with the greatness of the way, may 
He Himself remind you that " God hath not 
given to us the spirit of fear, but of power, and 
of love, and of a sound mind." 



[i 9 6] 



THE CALLING OF THE 
EPISCOPATE 



SERMON 

PREACHED ON St. LUKE'S DAY, OCTO- 
BER 18, 1889, IN St. PETER'S CHURCH 
PHILADELPHIA, ON THE OCCASION 
OF THE CONSECRATION of THE REV- 
EREND THOMAS F. DAVIES D.D. LL.D. 
AS BISHOP OF MICHIGAN 



THE MISSION OF THE EPISCOPATE 



WHEN Dr. Samuel Seabury, first bishop of 
Connecticut, after his consecration at Aber- 
deen, Nov. 14, 1784, by the Scottish bishops, 
returned to the United States, his coming was 
regarded by many of the most devout people in 
New England with unmixed apprehension and 
dismay. Prelacy and a monarchy had come to be 
with them almost identical terms. There were 
traditions still fresh among them of earlier days 
in the history of Puritanism when prelacy stood 
for cruelty, intolerance, and the most rigid pro- 
scription. They honestly feared it ; they wanted 
none of it; and they made haste, many of them, 
to proclaim that, whatever else religious liberty 
might mean, it did not mean the admission or 
toleration among them of a form of church gov- 
ernment which they honestly believed threatened 
the foundations of their civil and religious order 
alike. 

Such apprehensions, it is true, were not shared 
— at any rate, to the same extent — -by other 
colonies south of them. It will always be to the 
honor, for instance, of the colony of Penn, on the 
banks of the Delaware, that another and larger 
spirit prevailed there ; and it was a happy augury 
of the pacific influences which the Episcopal 

[•99] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Church was in coming days to exercise upon 
religious strife and dissension that the first bishop 
of Pennsylvania was the gentle William White, 
whose long episcopate and saintly and benignant 
presence, as he went to and fro in the streets of 
Philadelphia, were influences of enduring power 
throughout the whole commonwealth. 

More than forty years after that gracious episco- 
pate was ended, one of his successors in the 
office of a bishop knelt for consecration in that old 
St. Peter's in which White had so long ministered, 
and of which the kneeling presbyter, soon to be 
ordained a bishop, had himself been rector for 
nearly a score of years. The contrast between 
the two earliest consecrations to an American 
episcopate and this later one was most impressive. 
Seabury's and White's had occurred each in a 
foreign land, and in the presence of a mere hand- 
ful of more or less interested but largely alien 
spectators. The church to which they were to go 
had not a half-dozen organized dioceses, and but 
a handful of clergy. In many places, nay, in 
most places, it was utterly unknown, or known 
only to be despised. It was widely regarded as 
an uncongenial exotic, and its future was frankly 
predicted to be one of speedy and mortifying 
failure. 

A century afterwards there was consecrated in 
Philadelphia the Rev. Thomas F. Davies, D.D., 
LL.D., sometime rector of St. Peter's Church, to 
be bishop of the Diocese of Michigan. Trained 
in the Diocese of Connecticut, and identified with 
its literary and theological history by many ties, 
[ 200 ] 



THE MISSION OF THE EPISCOPATE 

he had been chosen to be the worthy successor of 
that rare man Dr. Samuel S. Harris, whose brief 
but brilliant episcopate in Michigan will long live 
in the grateful memory of American Churchmen; 
and in that episcopal succession in which he then 
took his place he was — significant fact — the one 
hundred and fifty-second bishop. Since White 
knelt at the altar of St. Peter's the small and 
obscure communion had grown to number some 
seventy living bishops, nearly as many dioceses 
and missionary jurisdictions, some four thousand 
clergy, with probably some three million people 
more or less directly dependent upon their minis- 
trations. On such an occasion it seemed appro- 
priate that something should be said defining the 
nature and claims of the historic episcopate, and 
indicating its mission to the American people. To 
this end the sermon which follows was preached 
on St. Luke's Day, Oct. 18, 1889, in St. Peter's 
Church, Philadelphia. 



t 201 1 



THE CALLING OF THE 
EPISCOPATE 



As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost 
said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I 
have called them. 

And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands 
on them, they sent them away. — Acts, xiii. 2, J. 

THESE words, which are included in the 
Anglican Office for the Consecration of a 
Bishop, are omitted from our own. This fact 
alone, if there were no other evidence of a differ- 
ence of opinion as to what that was which Saint 
Luke here describes, would sufficiently indicate that 
the Church has not always been, as to its nature, 
of one and the same mind. The Ordinal of the 
Church of England would seem to imply that it 
was an Ordination or Consecration. The judgment 
of scholars, who were Churchmen as well as 
scholars, has sometimes seemed to lean to that 
view of the transaction which makes of it simply 
a designation to a particular, and preeminently 
difficult and important, missionary work. 

It is not necessary for our present purpose to 
settle this controversy, nor is it greatly material. 
We are here for a definite business, and for that 
business we find in Holy Scripture, elsewhere if 
not here, abundant warrant. We are here not 
[202] 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

only because we believe that Christ has planted a 
Divine Society in the world, but that He Himself 
has ordained the mode of its perpetuation. We 
are here because we believe that to all men "dili- 
gently reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors 
it is," or, if it is not, it ought to be, " evident, 
that " that Divine Society which we call the 
Church of God in the world is not a ghost or a 
specter, but a visible and recognizable reality ; 
that it has certain marks or " notes," and that 
among these marks or " notes," no matter what 
its corruptions, or apostasies, or heresies, in this 
or that or the other age, is not only its Apostolic 
doctrine but its Apostolic fellowship. We are 
here because we believe that Apostolic fellowship 
to have meant no such invertebrate and acephalous 
thing as merely a community of sympathy and 
identity of ideas, but an organized brotherhood, 
with a rite of initiation and a rite of association, 
and an appointed agency for the maintenance of 
its organic life and the due transmission of its 
authority. 

Our brother, here, has been elected to a large 
and difficult task, and has been called, by the 
voice of the Church in the diocese to which he is 
presently to go, to take upon him the duties and 
burdens of the Episcopate. Under such circum- 
stances we can easily conceive that it would be 
appropriate that those from whom he is parting, 
and those among whom he is presently to be 
numbered, should give him their good wishes and 
God-speed, I am persuaded that no one of those 
to whom I speak this morning, that no one of 
[ 203 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

those who are soon to be his brethren in the office 
of the Episcopate, that no one, here or elsewhere, 
who knows and honors him for his winning and 
beautiful ministry, would dream of withholding 
either. 

But is this all that the Church has to give him, 
or all that the requirements of this occasion 
demand? Most surely you will not say so. 
Most surely you will agree with me that we have 
come here this morning because we are persuaded 
that no man " taketh this honor unto himself but he 
that is called of God as was Aaron," and that that 
Divine call is to find its evidence not alone in the 
election of a convention, or in any inward convic- 
tion, but equally and always by the transmission 
of an authority, having Scriptural and Apostolic 
warrant, and conferred by Apostolic commission. 
Amid systems as various and, alas, as mutually 
contradictory as the dissensions from which they 
have arisen, we who are here are constrained to 
see in the story of the infant life of the Church of 
God the unmistakable evidence that authority to 
exercise the ministry, of whatever rank or degree, 
comes not from below but from above, and that, 
as from the first it was handed down from Christ 
and then from His Apostles, and not up from the 
people, or across from equals, so it has been, or 
ought to have been, ever since. 

In one word, we are here because we believe in 
the Historic Episcopate, not merely as an historic 
fact but as an historic necessity — the historic 
sequence of a Divine purpose and plan, various 
in its transient and temporary accidents, if you 
[204] 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

choose, but moving steadily, and that not by the 
shaping of circumstances, but by the guiding of 
the Holy Ghost, toward that form and character 
which, having once taken on, it has now retained, 
whatever temporary obscuration of its primitive 
character or degradation of its high purpose may 
have befallen it, for well-nigh twenty centuries. 

And therefore we are here to disown the theory 
that the organic form of Christianity, as the Catho- 
lic Church holds it and has perpetuated it, is 
merely the development and outcome of civil and 
secular institutions, amid which it originally found 
itself, any more than the Atonement on Calvary 
was the outcome of the Platonic or Aristotelian 
philosophies. Points of resemblance, points of 
contact, points of identity, even, we may own, 
here and there, it may be, in the one as in the 
others ; but we are here to-day, if I at all under- 
stand the purpose of our coming, to affirm that 
yonder volume does not more truly declare to us 
the means of our salvation than it declares and 
defines that one preeminent agency, the Church 
of the living God, with its inspired message and 
its divinely instituted sacraments, and divinely 
appointed threefold ministry, as the visible agency 
and instrument by which that salvation is to be 
made known to men. 

And here, at any rate, whatever may be proper 
elsewhere, we are not called upon to go beyond 
this. How truly a human body may be so desig- 
nated which is more or less maimed or mutilated 
is a question which theology may not find it 
easier to answer in one domain than science in 

[*°5] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



another. But in an age when there is so much 
invertebrate belief, and when the tone of mutual 
complacency is so great that one man's deliro (I 
dream) is as good as another man's credo (I believe), 
it is as well in connection with such an occasion as 
this to understand the ground upon which we 
stand, and the point from which we set out. The 
cause of the reunion of Christendom will be greatly 
forwarded by the kindly temper which strives to 
understand, and scorns to misrepresent others ; 
but it will not be helped by the mistaken amia- 
bility which seeks to misinterpret or consents to 
misrepresent ourselves. 

I have said this much, and have endeavored to 
say it with utmost plainness, because, unless I am 
mistaken, the exigency of the hour demands it. 
But I have done so mainly because it opens the 
way to that larger view of our text and of this 
occasion to which, if possible, we should ascend. 

(a) For, first of all, and plainly enough, it 
belongs to us to remember on such an occasion as 
this that there is zpasty and that we cannot divorce 
ourselves from it. Interesting and impressive as 
even the coldest criticism would be apt to own the 
service in which we are now engaged, neither its 
impressiveness nor its intrinsic appropriateness is 
the reason for our observance of those solemn 
features which compose it. We did not originate, 
extemporize, or invent them. Their claim upon 
us, first of all, resides in this : that they are a part 
of that venerable and scriptural inheritance of 
which God has put us in trust. In an age which, 
with its smart sciolism, considers itself competent 

[ 206 3 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

to invent a method for every emergency, and 
extemporize a function for every most august 
solemnity, it is enough for us that we are here 
engaged in doing what "our fathers did aforetime." 
That law of historic continuity which Christ in 
His earlier ministry so consistently and invariably 
emphasized, from the day when, at His home in 
Nazareth, He went into the synagogue on the 
Sabbath day 1 to those closing hours when, on the 
eve of His crucifixion, He made ready to keep 
the Passover with His disciples, 2 is still the 
Church's truest wisdom, as it is daily coming more 
and more plainly to be seen to be an essential ele- 
ment of her inmost strength. The evolution of 
the Church, like the evolution of the highest 
forms of physical and intellectual life, must forever 
be along those lines which keep her present in 
close and vascular connection with her past. No 
more tragic lesson has been taught to Christendom 
than that which salutes us, in this land and age, 
in the manifold and mutually destructive divisions 
of that Christendom, as to the folly and madness 
of the defiance of that law. We are set, in a gene- 
ration of ignorant and audacious departures from 
primitive faith and practice, to say, and to say it 
over and over again, <c the old is better." We are 
set to affirm that, howsoever it may have been 
caricatured, overstated, or misunderstood, there is 
a doctrine of Apostolic succession in teaching, in 
ministry, in fellowship, and that we are to guard 
it and perpetuate it. Preeminent as are the 
truths of Christ's personal relation to the personal 

1 St, Luke, iv. 16. 2 St. Mark, xiv. 14. 

[207] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

soul, we may not forget that He has chosen to 
reveal and proclaim them through an agency which 
binds those souls to one another and to Him in 
the great as well as " good estate of the Catholic 
Church." And this it is our bounden duty to 
remember and to affirm, not less but more, because 
it is to many an unwelcome and unnecessary affir- 
mation, and one that, only late and slowly, men 
are coming to own and accept. 

(b) But when we have done this duty, we are 
not to leave the other duty undone. And what 
is the other duty, if it be not to remember that 
as there is a past, and that we must not get out 
of touch with that, so there is a present, and that 
we must be careful to get into touch with that? 
The fact of all others most inspiring in our land 
and day is this, that never before was the Church 
whose children we are so earnestly at work to 
understand the situation in the midst of which 
she finds herself, and so strenuous by any and 
every lawful means to adjust herself to its demands. 
An alien, as men perversely miscalled her, in the 
beginning, from the spirit of our republican insti- 
tutions and the genius of the American people, 
she has not failed to show that she is loyal to the 
one, and that she understands the other. Not 
always nor everywhere wise in the manner or the 
methods of her original approach to those whom 
she has sought to win, she has consented to unlearn 
not a little of her earlier stiffness, and largely to 
disown a temper of aristocratic reserve and exclu- 
siveness. As in England, so in America, she is 
no longer the church of a class or a caste, but 

[ 208 ] 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

preeminently, at any rate in some of her chiefest 
centers, the church of the people. 

Not, however, let me say, in a spirit of amiable 
indifferentism. It is a conspicuous infirmity of 
the religious activities of our time that, in their 
desire to commend themselves to those whom 
they seek to influence, they have not always 
remembered that the last method of effectively 
doing so is one of excessive complaisance and 
weak and worldly concession. The architecture 
of ecclesiastical buildings and places of religious 
worship in our day, the tone, not unfrequently, 
of our pulpits, the characteristics of worship, the 
speech and manners of the clergy, have all revealed 
a danger lest, in the aim to be human and fra- 
ternal, the Church and religion may very easily 
become secular and careless and worldly. In the 
statement of doctrine it is well, undoubtedly, that 
the parish priest should aim to translate the speech 
and the idioms of other days into our own ; but 
there is sometimes heard in the pulpit a timid 
concession to popular clamor, or popular fancy, 
which, in its spirit, is of the very essence of insta- 
bility and incertitude, and in its influence at once 
deteriorating and debilitating. "Stand fast " (0T77- 
icere), says the Apostle, "in the liberty wherewith 
Christ hath made you free," 1 and it is worth 
while to consider whether the liberty with which a 
Christian minister is endowed is not the liberty of 
constancy, rather than, in faith and ritual and 
manners, the liberty of mere vagrancy. In her 
efforts to adapt herself to all sorts and conditions 

1 Galatians, v. 1. 

[209] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



of men, the Church may indeed well remember 
her Master's command to condescend to men of 
low estate. But she is to descend, to condescend, 
not that she may stay on some lower level of 
truth and reverence and order, but that, reaching 
down to lost and guilty men, she may lift them 
up to every higher ideal of goodness and noble- 
ness and beauty. I hardly know how to say what 
I want to say without seeming in some degree to 
disparage efforts and enterprises with which, in 
their aim, I have the heartiest sympathy, and 
earnest men, for whose earnest purpose I have 
the heartiest respect ; but as there are methods 
and agencies which are used in our day by Christian 
people which throng streets and public halls with 
some jesting rabble following a brass band, and 
men and women tawdrily or grotesquely clad, to 
be the sport of lookers-on, so the Church is in 
danger, I sometimes fear, of a zeal to attract, 
rather than to edify, and to present herself as 
pretty and picturesque, rather than august, grave, 
and inspiring. Doubtless there are " many men 
and many minds," and the Catholic Church must 
be as universal in her methods and agencies as 
she claims to be in her mission and character. But 
methods, after all, are only secondary to that loving 
and self-forgetting spirit which using, as surely we 
may well remember in this venerable sanctuary, not 
yet spoiled by the iconoclastic spirit of a modernism 
which would leave nothing venerable unchanged, 
— which using, I say, only older and well-tried 
methods, has, nevertheless, wrought in all ages of 
the Church's history the mightiest miracles of love 
and healing. 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

Ours is indeed a new era, and we may not put 
the new wine into old bottles — we may not, in 
other words, always insist upon forcing this or that 
particular movement into superannuated and out- 
worn forms of activity or expression. But, in one 
sense, and that the deepest, the problems of our 
generation are not new but old — as old as sin and 
selfishness, as old as human waywardness and de- 
pravity and guilt. And, whether it be the frictions 
and mutual enmities of those in different walks of 
life, or the misery and shame that are the conse- 
quence of a disregard of the laws of God, what we 
want is not so much a new departure in methods 
as a new baptism of the old and yet ever renewing 
spirit. And so, the power which is to keep the 
Church, its episcopate, its clergy, its people, in touch 
with the present is the power of that divine sym- 
pathy and self-abnegation which shone, above all 
other graces, in the person and work of Jesus 
Christ. " And when they had fasted and prayed, 
and laid their hands on them, they sent them 
away/' Ah ! it was not for nothing, we may be 
sure, that just that precise form of commission and 
empowering was ordained for the observance of 
the infant Church of God, and those who should 
bear rule in it, for all ages. Those pierced hands, 
" which were nailed for our advantage to the bitter 
cross,' , and which, as Jean Paul wrote, " have 
turned the gates of centuries on their hinges, — 
what unceasing translation of the heart of God was 
wrought by their never-resting touch, of healing 
and of life-giving power, all the way from the 
blessing of little children, the opening of blind 

[211] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

eyes, cleansing of leprous bodies, the raising of 
the dead, — till they were outstretched in bene- 
diction above adoring disciples as He whose they 
were was parted from His flock, 4 and a cloud re- 
ceived Him out of their sight ! ' " Most happy, 
verily, is that appointment of this day, the feast 
of Saint Luke the beloved physician, for a service 
which binds that laying on of hands to which soon 
we shall proceed with the healing and healthful 
work of Christ's first Apostles. We may preach, 
and teach, and admonish, and exhort as we please 
— but until somehow we are turning words into 
work, and entreaty into helpful and outreaching 
service, we shall preach in vain. That declamatory 
and reactionary instinct in human nature which, in 
the presence of moral and social evils, spends itself 
in vehemence of denunciations and revolutionary 
proclamations of warfare upon all existing social 
order, is simply a bald impertinence until it is 
supplemented by some effort to lighten the burdens 
and readjust the inequalities which, ofttimes, the 
noisiest reformers " will not so much as touch with 
one of their fingers." The intellectual discontent, 
the impatience of creeds and symbols, the disposi- 
tion to challenge the stern and righteous teachings 
of God's Holy Word, the agrarianism of the prole- 
tariat, and the savage animosity of anarchical teach- 
ers and their disciples — these come, as often as 
otherwise, from a frigid and distant temper in those 
who stand over against them, a temper which is too 
indolent and too selfish to make the Catholic faith a 
living reality to men by the swift and loving eager- 
ness with which it is not only taught but lived. 
[212] 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

And all this touches the office and ministry 
which we are to-day to commit to this our brother- 
elect, in a very close and living way. The office 
of ruling and guidance and oversight, to which he 
is now to be set apart, can never be separated from 
that other of ordaining and confirming, in which 
he is to be the channel, under God's blessing, of 
those divine and enabling gifts which are for the 
strengthening of souls, and so for the healing of 
the nations. In other words, his work of over- 
sight, of episcopizing, can never be separated from 
that other work which keeps him ever, in a most 
real and literal way, in touch with, close to, and 
not aloof from, the flock which he is to feed and 
guide. At this point there recur to me some words 
which are surely, on this day and in connection 
with this service, of preeminent pathos and appro- 
priateness. In the volume entitled The Dignity 
of Man, published after his death by his daugh- 
ter, the late Bishop of Michigan, in this precise 
connection, speaks at length on this point : 

" It is perfectly obvious that when Jesus, in Saint 
John's Gospel, described Himself as the Shepherd 
who entereth in by the door, He was not discus- 
sing the question of the credentials of authority, 
or of the formal commission of shepherdhood ; 
but was pointing out the only way in which shep- 
herdhood of any kind can discharge its function, 
and realize its power. He was propounding a 
lesson which it behooves all men to ponder well 
who hope to influence their fellow-men for good. 
Rank, office, order, culture, property, — be the 
authority, the privilege, the right of these what 
[213] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

they may, the eternal law of God, as exemplified 
in the life of His Son, and taught in His Holy 
Word, and illustrated in human history, is this : 
that none of these, no matter how commissioned 
or sent, can exercise any real shepherdhood over 
men except as they are in sympathy with them. 
This is true in Church and State ; of the employers 
of labor ; of the heads of households ; of civil 
rulers and political leaders ; of bishops, priests and 
deacons, — the power to lead men lies in sympa- 
thizing with them and walking in the same way 
with them. c He that entereth in by the door is 
the shepherd of the sheep.' Saying this, the great 
Master spoke not merely as a moralist and sage, 
but also as a statesman. He propounded a new 
principle in social and political economy which 
princes and diplomatists have hardly yet grown 
up to the grandeur of, though the vicissitudes of 
falling thrones and changing dynasties have been 
confirming it for thousands of years. For man 
has always been prone to think that eminence of 
gifts or station would give him power ; that pomp, 
or wealth, or place, would enable him to exercise 
dominion. But Jesus utterly reversed all this 
when He said, c Whosoever will be great among 
you, let him be your minister ; and whosoever will 
be chief among you, let him be your servant : even 
as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto 
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many/ Saying this He did not repudiate dis- 
tinction of order, but rather pointed out the eternal 
purpose for which it is ordained. He did not 
renounce authority, but rather pointed out the 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

only way to vindicate and exercise it. For He 
said in another place : ' Ye call me Master and 
Lord : and ye say well ; for so I am/ But because 
I am your Lord and Master, I am come among 
you as one that serveth. So here He taught the 
same great lesson. The man of influence is the 
man of sympathy ; the man of power is the man 
of service. The shepherd enters in by the sheep's 
door; he leads them in and out and finds pasture 
for them. He knows them, and calls them by 
name. They know his voice, and will come when 
he calls them. He that walks with the sheep is 
the shepherd of the sheep." 

You at any rate, my dear brother, will not mis- 
understand or blame if I recall these words to-day. 
There are some of us here this morning who, like 
those Hebrews at the rebuilding of the Temple, 
cannot quite part the joy of this happy and aus- 
picious hour from tearful memories of one whose 
place you are fitly to fill, and whose noble episco- 
pate, all too soon ended as it seems to us, you are 
to-day to take up. You, who knew and honored 
him, will not misconstrue us if, seeking for a word 
most apt and fitting for this hour, we borrow his. 
And verily you need not. That single and blame- 
less ministry, so unobtrusive, so untiring, so wise 
and tender and helpful, which for so many years 
you have exercised in this parish, is the best wit- 
ness that, in taking up the larger and more difficult 
tasks which are before you, you do not now need 
to begin to learn to keep yourself in touch with 
the past, and also with the present. The cure and 
charge in which so long and faithfully you have 
["53 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

labored is one endeared to Churchmen, and not 
alone in this diocese but all over the land. The 
cure of White and Kemper, De Lancey and Oden- 
heimer, — it is associated in the mind of him who 
is your preacher with one whose name he bears, 
and who, coming here now nearly seventy years 
ago to receive at the hands of William White both 
baptism and ordination, returned after many days 
to minister in this diocese as its Bishop for nearly 
twenty years. It is thus that the consecrated memo- 
ries of the past and the hallowed affections of the 
present assemble here to speak to you, Salve, vale, 
— Hail, and farewell ! It is thus that the Church 
of other and feebler days joins in sending you forth 
to what was then untrodden ground, and now has 
grown to be one of her foremost and noblest dio- 
ceses. Believe me, that in going there you will 
have the welcome of warm and loyal hearts and 
the support of strong and generous hands. And 
believe me too, that in welcoming you to this 
office to-day, we who do so are glad and thankful 
that the Providence of God, wiser than our poor 
judgments, has seemed to disappoint us for a time, 
only to give us to-day, in the successor of that 
great Bishop of Michigan who went so lately to 
his rest, one who, in the judgment of the whole 
Church, is preeminently worthy to succeed him. 
The various training which as teacher, pastor, and 
priest you have had will find no unworthy field 
in the diocese to which you go, and that earlier 
identity with studies preeminently identified with 
God's ancient people is one among many guaran- 
tees that you will both keep yourself in touch with 
[»i6] 



THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE 

a venerable and historic past as well as with a living 
and exacting present. 

I know what ties you sever to-day, and I should 
sadly abuse my opportunity if I said one word, 
even though it might be of well-meant sympathy, 
to open that wound, and so make the parting harder 
and the wrench more bitter. You are called to-day 
to make an offering of yourself to God; and this 
your flock is called to give its best for Him, in 
giving you. 

May God who has called you, as we are most 
certainly persuaded, strengthen you, and comfort 
them ; and may the Master whom you hear to-day, 
bidding you go forth to take this yoke of higher 
ministry upon you, walk beside you all the way, 
making that yoke an easy yoke, and this, your 
heaviest burden, light! 



[«7] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 



SERMON 
PREACHED AT THE CONSECRA- 
TION OF THE REVEREND PHILLIPS 
BROOKS, D.D., AS BISHOP OF MASSA- 
CHUSETTS, AT TRINITY CHURCH 
BOSTON, MASS., ON WEDNESDAY 
OCTOBER 14, 1891 



INTRODUCTORY 



THE first bishop of the Diocese of Massachu- 
setts, like him in connection with whose 
consecration the following sermon was preached, 
was a native of Massachusetts, and a graduate, in 
a. d. 1744, of Harvard College. Edward Bass 
was born in Dorchester; ordained deacon in the 
chapel of Fulham Palace, London, by the Right 
Rev. Dr. Sherlock, the bishop of that diocese, and 
priest a week after his ordination to the diaconate, 
in the same place and by the same prelate. He 
was consecrated bishop in Christ Church, Phila- 
delphia, May 7, 1797, and one of his consecrators 
was Dr. Thomas John Claggett, the first bishop 
consecrated in the United States — the others 
being Bishops White of Pennsylvania and Pro- 
voost of New York. Seven years later Bishop 
Bass was succeeded by Dr. Samuel Parker, also a 
New Englander by birth and a graduate of Harvard 
College, who was consecrated in New York on 
September 14, 1 804. Dr. Parker died three months 
after his consecration, without having performed 
one episcopal act. 

His successor was Dr. Alexander Viets Gris- 
wold, a saint and missionary, to whom, owing to 
the weakness of the Church in New England, 
which denied a bishop to a single commonwealth, 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

was committed what was called "the Eastern 
Diocese" — a jurisdiction including Maine, New 
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode 
Island. Dr. Griswold, a native of Connecticut, 
was, like his predecessor, consecrated in Trinity 
Church, New York, on May 29, 181 1, Massa- 
chusetts having thus been without episcopal 
oversight — for which then, indeed, it had very 
small desire — for seven years. 

Bishop Griswold's episcopate continued until 
February 15, 1843, during which time he became 
presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in 
America. He fell dead in Boston at the door of 
his assistant and successor, Dr. Manton Eastburn, 
who had been consecrated only a few weeks before 

— December 29, 1842, in Trinity Church, Boston. 
Bishop Eastburn was a native of Leeds, England 

— and he never forgot it. His venerated prede- 
cessor had been an American of the Americans in 
his simplicity, primitiveness of habits, manners, 
and tastes, and in his traditional identity with New 
England. Of singular meekness, and no less singu- 
lar wisdom, Bishop Griswold left behind him the 
fragrant memory of a wise and gentle ministry, in 
which the episcopal never wholly displaced the 
pastoral and parochial work, and from which there 
has come down to later days the image of one with 
exceptional aptitudes for commending the Church 
to a generation that disliked or distrusted her. 

His successor, Dr. Eastburn, had been eminent, 
in the Church of the Ascension in New York, as 
a preacher, and was a man of exceptional culture 
for his day, and of a rare taste in ancient as well as 
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INTRODUCTORY 

modern literature. By temperament and inherit- 
ance he was eminently a conservative, and he 
neither greatly desired the influx of those connected 
with other communions into the Church nor 
encouraged it. But while tenacious of his opinions 
and adverse to change, he was the friend of all 
good men and good works, and devout, courageous, 
and courteous under all circumstances. 

Bishop Eastburn died September 12, 1872, and 
was succeeded by the Right Rev. Henry Benjamin 
Paddock, D.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y., who was 
consecrated in that city at Grace Church, Septem- 
ber 17, 1873. He died March 9, 1891, after an 
episcopate distinguished by unwearied devotion to 
his work and his flock, and endeared to all who 
knew him by the gentle dignity, transparent purity, 
and devout consistency of his life and character. 

The sermon which follows was preached at the 
consecration of his successor, Dr. Phillips Brooks, 
at Trinity Church, Boston, of which he had been 
rector for more than twenty years, on Wednesday, 
October 14, 189 1. 



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MISSION AND COMMISSION 



As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost 
said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto 
I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, 
and laid their hands on them they sent them away. So they, 
being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed. — Acts, xiii. 2—4. 

Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of 
my hands. — 2 Timothy, i. 6. 

TN words such as these we have a picture, out of 
that earliest life of the Church, of which the 
books from which I take it tell the story. How 
fresh and vivid it is! What high enthusiasm, 
what uncalculating ardor, what unhesitating self- 
sacrifice ! One does not need to be in sympathy 
with their beliefs or at one with their aims, even, 
as a good deal of modern literature has taught us, 
to be moved by their fervor or kindled at least 
into admiration by the story of those earliest 
ministries. The coldest heart must own that, 
whether it were myth or fable that stirred them, 
for a while at any rate a new spell had touched 
the world, and a new voice had spoken to waiting 
and eager souls. We look at the mighty forces 
against which the first Christian disciples hurled 
themselves, we look at the spiritual torpor, the 
blank hopelessness, the unutterable moral degra- 
dation to which they made their appeal, and we 
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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

wonder at their audacity — or their faith! No 
hostility daunted them; no indifference discour- 
aged them; no tremendous bulk of evil deterred 
them. The work they aimed to do, men told 
them, was impossible work. They simply refused 
to believe it. The obstacles which confronted 
them, other men told them, were insurmountable 
obstacles. They simply refused to see it. They 
were on fire with a consuming purpose, and they 
did not stop, whether to measure their task or to 
discuss its difficulties. This, we say, is the fruit 
of a great enthusiasm. It always works this way, 
and it would be without results if it did not. 

Yes, but the moment that we look a little closer 
at the story of this enthusiasm, we see that along 
with it there was something more. It has been 
common to disparage the gifts of the first founders 
of Christianity, and to seek to make the more of 
its distinctive characteristics by making as little as 
possible of the men who illustrated them. Accord- 
ing to our standards, doubtless, they were not 
very learned nor very influential persons. They 
have been called — the College of the Twelve 
Apostles — a handful of peasants; and, in one 
sense, some of them were. They have been 
described as insignificant among the great of their 
own day ; and, measured in one way, they were. 
But when we come closer to some, at least, among 
them we cannot so easily disesteem them. One 
among them was chosen to be the leader among 
his fellows. Can anybody who reads the story of 
his life find it easy to believe that he had not in 
him the natural genius of leadership? If there 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

are in certain types of organized Christian society 
what we may call Petrine qualities, can it be 
doubted that they find their first and most charac- 
teristic illustration in him who was Simon Peter? 
Or again, if there has been in all ages of the 
Church what we may call the philosophic instinct, 
is it difficult to trace its source to those letters of 
that pupil of Gamaliel who came in time to reveal 
the resplendent intellectual qualities of Paul the 
apostle to the Gentiles ? The interrogative impulse 
of Thomas the twin, the affectionate brotherliness 
of Andrew the missionary — were not each of 
these in their way distinctive personal traits, some 
of them of a very rare and beautiful quality, which 
go no little way to explain what more than one of 
them did to forward the knowledge and hasten 
the triumph of the cause to which he had com- 
mitted himself? Surely he alone can say so who 
has not studied the quality of their work, of what- 
ever kind it was, nor measured the character of 
its results. There was high enthusiasm, there was 
consuming ardor; but along with these in every 
most noteworthy instance of apostolic achieve- 
ment there was some distinct natural endowment 
which would have given its possessor anywhere 
commanding influence among men. 

And so it has always been. God has indeed 
often chosen by the " foolishness of preaching," 
as it has seemed to some poor souls irresponsive 
to its mighty power, to save them that believe; 
but it has not been by foolish preaching. The 
voices that have stirred the world, the messages 
that have thrilled and enkindled cold and dis- 
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MISSION AND COMMISSION 



couraged hearts, have not been the voices or the 
messages of fools. Whatever strange passion 
inflamed them, whatever tense and eager purpose 
would not give them pause, if in them there was 
lifting and awakening power, if their words not 
merely kindled the emotions but convinced the 
reason and persuaded the judgment, it was because 
behind the passion there was a thinking, reason- 
ing man, speaking out of the large and rich man- 
hood in himself to the manhood of other men. 
And so, to come back to the picture with which 
we started, does anybody suppose, when at Antioch 
the Church in that busy city fasted and celebrated 
its solemn Eucharist, and prepared to choose 
those who were to go forth on its high errands, 
that " Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius 
of Cyrene, and Manaen which had been brought 
up with Herod the Tetrarch," and the rest of 
them were there at haphazard ? Out from these 
half-dozen men, more or less, were to be chosen 
two to be consecrated on that memorable day to 
a great and memorable work. Do you suppose 
that those who a little later laid their hands on 
them concerned themselves in no wise, before- 
hand, to find out what kind of men they had been, 
what sort of gifts were theirs, what order of work 
they had accomplished, just in precisely the same 
way that, before appointing any man in this com- 
munity to any responsible task, his fellows are 
wont to inquire what sort of gifts he has ? In 
one place we read, in this story of first iKKXrjo-ia 
building, of men as commended to the confidence 
of their fellows because they had "hazarded their 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

lives." Very well, then, those who chose them 
wanted courage. In another place we read of a 
Pagan ruler, stupid and sunk in his sins, as saying 
to a Christian apostle, "Almost thou persuadest 
me" Very well, then, again, they wanted logic. 
Do you suppose that they did not seek for elo- 
quence (if they could find it), for sympathy, for 
the quick power of understanding another's per- 
plexities, for that infinite hopefulness of human 
nature which, I sometimes think, is quite its finest 
quality? We may be sure they did. And no less 
sure may we be that when Barnabas and Saul were 
singled out from among their associates for the 
rare dignity of suffering and loneliness and priva- 
tion in their high office, they were chosen because, 
anywhere, and among any set of men, and in 
whatever service, they would sooner or later, but 
inevitably, have come to the front. 

Yes, but how were they singled out? We 
advance a step farther in that story which I have 
recalled to you, and we read that "As they fasted 
and ministered before the Lord, there came a voice 
which said, c Separate . . . Barnabas and Saul for 
the work.'" Whose voice was it? Were those 
men called thus to their high office by the high 
acclaim of a public assembly? For myself I have 
little doubt that, before the Voice that spoke those 
few words was heard, there had been heard another 
and more multitudinous one. That city of Antioch 
in which Simeon, and Lucius, and the rest of them 
were gathered contained the first church organized 
among the Gentiles, and it became in time the 
centre of those missionary activities by which the 
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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

Roman world was evangelized. The prophets and 
teachers who began the work were supplemented, 
later, by Barnabas and Saul; and step by step in 
the simple story we may trace the unfolding of 
the organic life of the Church. There was an 
assembly first, and then there came to be the 
ecclesia — <jvvayQr\vcLi ev rrj e/cAcX^crta — and it was 
this community of the brethren, it may easily have 
been, that with more or less formality first indicated 
its preferences, and pointed its finger of designa- 
tion towards the men who were fittest and worthiest 
for the higher service of the Church. 

But this was not Mission. That comes into 
view when we read that the Voice which said, 
"Separate Barnabas and Saul," was the Voice of 
the Holy Ghost. It is not only "separate"; it is 
"separate Me." It is not only for the work ye 
are to separate them, but "for the work where- 
unto I have called them." And thus we come into 
the presence of that unique distinction which 
forever differentiates the enthusiasm of the disciples 
of Jesus Christ from all other enthusiasms. It was 
the enthusiasm of a new creation by the power of 
a Divine breath. One day, a little before, the 
Master of twelve men is about to vanish out of 
their sight. One who had come back to draw 
about Him anew a little band of personal follow- 
ers meets them on the first day of the week, and 
saying to them, "As my Father hath sent me, 
even so send I you," "He breathed on them and 
said, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost.'" 1 A little 
later this same Being, ascending up from these 

x St. John, xx. 21, 22. 

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LAW AND LOYALTY 

same followers, bids them "depart not from Jeru- 
salem, but wait for the promise of the Father." 1 
Well, they wait, and the promise is fulfilled. 
"There came a sound from heaven," we read, 
"and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." 2 
Henceforth there was a new Force in the world, 
and they were never without it. It is the seven- 
fold power of God the Holy Ghost. Call it an 
influence, water it down to be a cult, disparage it 
as so much mysticism, verily you will have to tear 
yonder story to pieces, and hunt out with micro- 
scope and dissecting-knife the very structural fibre 
of those first parchments on which the Gospel 
story was written, before you can get that element 
out of it ! Bereft of the mission and work of the 
Holy Ghost, calling, arresting, convicting, con- 
vincing, enlightening, transforming, empowering 
— the whole fabric of primitive history becomes 
somehow invertebrate, and crumbles into a shape- 
less mass of incident and talk. Nothing is more 
tremendous in its significance than the way in 
which all that new life of the first century takes its 
rise in the active, audible, commanding Presence 
in the Church of the Holy Ghost, and from all 
excursions, activities, or ministries forever returns 
to it. The visit of Peter and John to Samaria, 
the descent of the Spirit at Csesarea, the coming 
of Saint Paul to Ephesus, are all parts of a whole 
of which the calling of Barnabas and Saul is but 
another part. There was a new and commanding 
Voice ; it spoke with unhesitating authority. There 
was a new and regenerating breath. It came with 

1 Acts, i. 4. 3 Acts, ii. 2, 4. 

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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

irresistible power. And when it came the world 
was transfigured, and man himself transformed. 
Out into that wild waste of sin and shame the men 
to whom it came went forth, and nothing was able 
to withstand them. Whatever they had been in 
themselves, this new Force and Fire somehow 
multiplied and enlarged them. Not alone on the 
day of Pentecostal baptism, but all the way down 
and on, they spake with other tongues as the Spirit 
gave them utterance. And this they, and those 
who have succeeded them, have been doing ever 
since. If they have forgotten that heaven-given 
Source of their strength, that strength has dwindled 
and shrunk. If they have remembered it, no lapse 
of centuries nor changes of custom have been 
sufficient to stale its freshness nor to resist its 
transforming spell. This TTaXiyyeveo-'ia — yes, that 
was it — still stirs and quickens the Church, and is 
the supreme secret of its power. In one word, that 
which gave to these men, and to those who have 
come after them in that Divine society of which 
they were the ministers, the authority whether to 
teach or to rule, was not their native gifts — how- 
ever great they may have been, nor however largely 
they may have been considered in their choice — 
but the calling and the sending of the Holy Ghost. 

But a still further question remains to be an- 
swered. What was not alone the evidence or token 
of that mission, but its authentication? Was this 
the whole story of that mission — that certain men 
being assembled together, a voice said, " Separate 
me Barnabas and Saul," and that then those who 
were named separated themselves and went away, 
[»3«] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

and henceforth did their work as men fully and 
sufficiently authorized and empowered thus for its 
discharge? On the contrary, there is something 
more in the history, which we may not arbitrarily 
leave out, and which is just as essential to its 
integrity as anything that has gone before. We 
may wish that it were not there. We may believe 
it to have been the source of endless and most 
hurtful superstitions. We may dismiss it as a relic 
of that outworn ceremonialism from which the 
world of that day was not yet wholly free. But 
still it is there ; and, as honest men, we must deal 
frankly and honestly with it. For this is the story 
in its completeness: "The Holy Ghost said, 
' Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work 
whereunto I have called them/ And when they 
had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, 
they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by 
the Holy Ghost, departed." Certainly, there is no 
obscurity here. Juggle with the words as one 
may, he cannot separate the inward call and the 
outward ordinance, the spiritual mission and the 
tactual commission, the divine empowerment and 
the human authentication of it. 

Let no one misunderstand me. Am I affirm- 
ing that the gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost 
are invariably and exclusively tied to the agencies 
ordained for their transmission? I am affirming 
nothing of the sort. Who are we that we should 
limit the power of that Divine Spirit which first 
brooded upon chaos and evoked from it order 
and beauty and life? There are some of us here 
who must always gratefully remember saintly 

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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

ancestors who disesteemed, if they did not despise, 
all visible ordinances, and dismissed them utterly 
out of the horizon whether of their observance or 
of their belief. Happy he who, with the help of 
church and sacrament and duly transmitted minis- 
try in all their fullest completeness, can emulate 
their sainthood, and tread at ever so great a dis- 
tance in their holy footsteps ! But, all the same, 
"God is not the author of confusion in the churches 
of the saints "; and as, from the beginning, it has 
been a law of that order that He shall work, 
whether in His kingdom of Nature or His king- 
dom of Grace, along the lines of His own divine 
appointment, so it will be to the end. Departures, 
revolts, long-continued disregard, and indifference 
there may be, with perhaps large if not quite com- 
plete justification, and along with these there may 
be also the most strenuous service, the widest 
learning, the most ardent faith, the most beautiful 
self-sacrifice. And all these shall be the fruit of 
that " self-same Spirit " which worketh the one 
thing, though not necessarily or invariably by the 
one way. But still the fact remains that there is 
a way which is of God's appointment ; there is a 
ministry which He first commissioned, and which 
they whom He first commissioned passed on and 
down to others. Its authority does not come up 
from the people; it descends from the Holy 
Ghost. And as in the beginning its outward and 
visible sign was the laying on of apostolic hands 
upon men called, whether to this or that or the 
other service, — pastoral, priestly, or prophetic, 
yet still to an apostolic ministry, — so it has been 
[ 2 33 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

ever since. We may exaggerate or travesty it as 
we please. We may exult over its corruptions, 
and ridicule its pretensions, and deride its efficacy. 
None of these things can dismiss out of human 
history or human consciousness this fact that, 
unless we are to dismiss the whole story of which 
it is a part, the apostolic ministry is an ordering 
of divine appointment, apart from which you can- 
not find any clear trace of a primitive ministry or 
a primitive Church. We turn from this scene at 
Antioch to those memorable ministries that came 
after it. One of them stands forth conspicuous 
above all the apostolates of its age — unique in 
its energy, unapproachable in its heroism, incom- 
parable alike in the power of its preaching and in 
the inexhaustible richness of its writings. What 
a fine scorn there is in those writings for that 
retrospective piety which lingered regretfully 
among the beggarly elements of the elder order 
and ritual — what impatience of the letter, what 
bold assertion of Christian liberty, what intense 
ardor of spiritual enthusiasm ! Yes, but what 
scrupulous respect for authority, what careful 
observance of apostolic tradition, what reverent 
use of appointed means! There came a day in 
the ministry of this grand Apostle when he is to 
set apart a youthful disciple and son in the faith 
to be an overseer of the church in Ephesus. How 
does he do it? Does he tell him of the work 
that he is to do, and then simply dismiss him to 
do it? Does he say, " Go, my son, and tell men 
in Asia Minor the story of your Lord's love, and 
write me occasionally how you are getting on " ? 
t 2 34 ] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 

Not such is the meaning of that clear and unequiv- 
ocal language which he uses : " Stir up the gift of 
God which is in thee," — and which is in thee 
not by inherited cleverness, or acquired learning, 
or popular endorsement, — but " by [Sia, the 
Greek is] the laying on of my hands"; or, as the 
same fact is elsewhere stated, "Neglect not the 
gift that was given thee . . . with the laying on 
of the hands of the presbytery." And thus once 
and again does this Apostle of a spiritual religion 
guard against that disesteem of the outward insti- 
tutions of the Church, without which history, and 
that not so very ancient either in this our western 
world, demonstrates that religion runs thin and 
runs out. 

It is this fact which explains our presence here 
to-day. There is, indeed, a theory of Christianity 
which resolves it chiefly into forms and cere- 
monies; which makes the means the end; the 
instrument the result ; the sign the thing signified. 
In all ages of the world it has illustrated an enor- 
mous power — first of obscuring essential truth, 
and then of debilitating human faith and conduct. 
I do not wonder that men are afraid of it. I do 
not wonder that, in the history of the Church, 
men have run out of her cold ceremonialism, 
wherever, as so widely, it has been dominant, into 
whatever warmth and ardor, into whatever purity 
and simplicity, offered them a refuge from its stiff 
and frigid and often corrupt formality. Most 
heavy is their responsibility because of whose 
soulless idolatry of the letter and the ceremony 
this has come to pass. But still the fact remains : 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

Christ did not leave His truth and fellowship in 
the world unorganized and disembodied. His 
own coming was a veritable incarnation — no 
shadowy ghost ministry, inaudible, invisible, and 
intangible. And His continued incarnation in 
His Church is but the transformation of His 
embodiment in one, into His ever-living and ever- 
active embodiment in the whole. I am told that 
you and I must believe in an invisible Church. 
Very well ; let us do so so far as we can. But as 
yet the only Church of which I know, in the way 
in which I can know anything, is a visible Church, 
with a visible order, and visible sacraments, and a 
visible fellowship, and which thus witnesses to me 
the continued life and power of its invisible Lord 
and Head, once Himself embodied in our flesh 
among us. One day I shall doubtless know some- 
thing else and more, of which this visible Church 
is a part ; but as yet the sphere of my activities 
must be found within the fellowship of that his- 
toric body of which thus far this morning I have 
been speaking. As one of New England's proph- 
ets — himself, I think, farthest removed from the 
Church's conception of historic Christianity — has 
said : 

" There are reasoners whose generalizations 
have carried them so far as to leave all names of 
Church or Christianity behind in contempt. But 
when the generalizing process can seduce a writer 
to the extent of declaring that there is no moral 
difference worth considering between one man 
and another, and leads a second writer to smooth 
over, as a trifling roughness in the grain of the 

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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

wood, the distinction between evil and good, a 
question may perhaps arise, alike in a religious or 
a philosophic mind, whether there is not some 
point for generalization to stop. If excessive 
particularizing makes the bigot with his narrow 
mind, or the superstitious man with his false rev- 
erence, too much generalizing empties the heart 
clean of its warmth and friendship and worship. 
It abolishes all terms. It dissolves individual 
existence. It leaves the soul a mere subject, with 
no relations recognized to human creatures or to 
God himself. 

"One thinker may say, C I care for no ecclesi- 
astical associations whatsoever, and find my only 
Church in the world.' But the world proves, as 
Jesus and his Apostles describe it, too wide, 
imperfect, and still evil either to embrace his holy 
efforts, or to give his spirit a home. He must, 
in contradiction of his theory, abide in and act 
from a grander, though in visible dimensions a 
smaller circle, before he can act to bless and save 
the world itself. 

" Another thinker proclaims his allegiance to 
God in his pure infinity alone, leaving the Christ 
of the Gospel aside. But let his doctrine of space 
and science and omnipresence of one solitary 
Power through earth and stars, recommend itself 
as it may to the speculative mind, it spreads [but] 
a thin atmosphere around us, in which we feel 
discouraged and cold, like explorers of the Arctic 
region of thought, and we cry out for a nearer 
and somehow more human divinity. This is the 
unspeakable boon Jesus confers on the human 
[>37] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

race, that he familiarizes and domesticates God, 
shows him in a mortal frame, and by his incar- 
nation of the great Spirit makes us partakers of the 
Divine nature more than we could become by the 
discovery of ten thousand new systems, or by 
peering forever into the measureless expanse of 
the milky way." 1 

So speaks another far removed from ourselves. 
Yes, but if this was the meaning and power of that 
Incarnation of the Son of God whereby He became 
the son of Mary, what shall we say of that other 
and wider incarnation which He finds in the life 
of His Church ? Is that to be the shadowy, filmy, 
ghostly thing that He who founded it was Him- 
self most surely not? No, no; the Church is still 
here a visible Body, with visible Ordinances, its 
life descending (wherever else life may be) along 
appointed lines by ordered modes which He Him- 
self, who is its Head, ordained or else inspired. 
The pendulum swings to and fro, now this way 
for centuries, and then the other way; but under- 
neath its widest divergencies as it moves to left or 
right there is this central fact of the Incarnate 
Ministry of the Son of God, and all that it means 
to-day in the life and work of His Church. There 
may be some of us who are bred so fine, or who 
have climbed so high, that all the outward is for 
us of small account. Our homage is for great 
ideas, we say, working along lofty lines of thought, 
and appealing to the intellectual rather than the 
affectional or emotional nature. Yes, and the time 
may come when in such an ideal of fellowship with 

1 Bartol : Church and Congregation, pp. 20—22. 
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MISSION AND COMMISSION 

Jesus Christ both reason and faith shall find their 
most perfect satisfaction. But it has not come yet. 
The world, in the conditions of its life and thought, 
whatever may have been the progress of the race, 
remains under the same limitations as those amid 
which Jesus wrought when first He came to men. 
It is still a world of sight and sound, of taste and 
touch, as well as of intuition and reason and 
imagination. The warrior still cherishes his bit 
of ribbon symbolic of heroic suffering; why may 
not the Christian cherish some simple emblem of 
the passion of His Lord? The soldier still wears 
his crimson sash or scarf. Why may I not wear a 
black or a white one ? The old man still recalls, 
with inextinguishable tenderness and gratitude, the 
father's hand once laid in benediction on his boyish 
head. And shall we not prize the hands that 
once, when we knelt at yonder chancel rail, or at 
some other, were laid upon ours? Ah, believe 
me, He who knew what was in man did not touch, 
and touch, and touch again for nothing ! Take 
His human hand, outstretched to bless, to heal, 
to open, to awaken, to break and to distribute, 
but always touching — no vileness too vile for its 
cleansing contact, no slumber too deep for its awak- 
ening call, no impotence too utter for its transform- 
ing power — take all that that Hand has wrought 
and has translated to men, the miracles of God, 
the tenderness of God, the never wearying succor 
and salvation of God, out of the Gospel story, and 
you have bereft that story almost beyond repair. 

But just here it may be said: "All this is very 
pretty, very clever, very adroit indeed, but how 
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LAW AND LOYALTY 

unutterably small and petty ! How pitiful is this 
resting in the form, as if it mattered with what 
form or with what commission you or I wrought, 
so long as we cling to the essence and the spirit of 
the Master's teaching. Pray let us dismiss these 
dreary and unprofitable discussions about the 
visible in Christianity, and get down to the life 
and soul of it!" Men and brethren, there never 
was a more solemn impertinence under the sun ! 
Believe me, I am as much concerned as anybody 
to get down to the life and soul of Christianity; 
but as I never knew, nor you, of any other life 
and soul without a body in all the history of this 
world of ours, neither may we look for any other 
in the life of God's Church. But whether we do 
or not, what I resent most of all is that intolerable 
presumption and perverseness which in discussing 
the question of the Body of Christ in the world 
persists in putting asunder what not I, or any 
body of conceited ecclesiastics, but Jesus Christ 
Himself, hath joined together. It is not more 
certain that He has revealed a grace than that 
He has ordained means of grace. The two are 
not enemies. They are rather parts of one whole, 
and the whole is of His ordering. And therefore 
our office, however clever we may be, or however 
sublimated our ideas, is to own that oneness and 
humbly to cherish and honor it. We need to 
reverence the Sacrament as well as Him who 
appointed it. We need to cherish the Order as 
well as to pay our homage to Him who in the 
beginning called forth and commissioned those 
who were its founders. And most of all, I think, 
[240] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 

we need to try and see how now, at any rate, 
when some of the most aggressive intellectual 
forces of our time are busy in the endeavor to 
dismiss out of the realm of religion positive facts 
and a divine revelation, it is our business to hold 
fast to that divine society and that primitive 
ministry which were appointed to conserve and 
proclaim them both. " By no unmeaning chance," 
says the venerable teacher from whom I have 
already quoted, " is the Church so often on our 
tongues. Not in vain does the reformer with his 
sharpest criticism pay to her his respect. No 
rotten and crumbling ark do her children stay up 
and bear on with their hands. What but the 
Church is rooted and growing forever in the all- 
wasting floods of time ? No other institution of 
government or society, from the farthest right to 
the extreme left of human speculation, so widely 
and clearly touches the thought of the age." 1 

And so to-day we come, in this persuasion, to 
set apart one whose ministry within the walls of 
this historic Church has spoken so widely and so 
helpfully to the thought of our age. We are not 
here, as in a drawing-room, to give him our con- 
gratulations. We are here in God's sanctuary to 
give him our commission. Henceforth he is to 
be a bishop in the Church of God, to whom no 
one of all God's children is to be alien or remote. 
" Reverend Father in God" we shall say presently 
to him who is to be the consecrator of this our 
brother, as best describing his relations both to 

1 Church and Congregation, by Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol, 
Introduction, p. 7. 

[241 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

this occasion and to the Church whose servant he 
is. Could there be a designation more affecting 
or more inspiring? How many aching hearts 
there are to-day, adrift on the sea of outworn 
human systems, weary of doubt, stained by sin, 
discouraged, lonely, or forgotten of their fellow- 
men, who are waiting for one in whose great soul 
a divine Fatherhood of love and compassion lives 
anew to recall and arouse and ennoble them ! We 
speak of the limitations of the Episcopate in these 
modern days, and it has its limitations. I am not 
sure that on the whole they are not wise ones. 
We in America have shorn the office of much of 
its state, and ceremony, and secular authority, 
and in doing so I am persuaded that we have 
done well. The true power of the Episcopate 
must forever be in the exercise of those spiritual 
gifts and graces of which it is the rightful, as it 
was meant to be the lowly, inheritor. But for 
the exercise of these there are, verily, no limi- 
tations. No human interest, no social problem, 
no personal sorrow or want can be alien to the 
true bishop. Whether he will or not, his office 
lifts him out of narrower interests, personal jeal- 
ousies, small and individual conceptions. Whether 
other men see with his eyes or not, he must for- 
ever try to see with their eyes. Whether his 
clergy and his people understand and love him, 
he must be always trying to understand and love 
them. And if he does, what opportunity opens 
before him ! It is easy enough in one way to 
narrow and limit the Episcopate, to exaggerate its 
prerogatives and minimize its obligations, to 
[242] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 

stiffen its ministry into a hard and dry routine, 
and its personality into the speech and the manners 
of a martinet. It is easy for a bishop to concern 
himself exclusively with the mint and anise and 
cumin of rite and rubric and canon, and when 
he does not do this, there will be those who will 
be swift to tell him not to go beyond his appointed 
round nor to waste his strength in other than the 
task-work of his office. But if he refuses to be 
fettered by any such narrow construction of his 
consecration vows as that, then, as he hearkens to 
those affecting words with which presently this 
our brother will be addressed, " Be to the flock 
of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf ; feed them, devour 
them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind 
up the broken, bring again the outcast, seek the 
lost," how wide and how effectual is the door 
which they hold open ! The world waits, my 
brothers, for men who carry their Lord's heart in 
their breasts, and who will lay their hands on the 
heads of His erring ones with His own infinite 
tenderness. And he will best do that work who 
comes to it with widest vision and with largest 
love. 

And so our act to-day becomes at once con- 
sistent and prophetic. I can well understand the 
grief and dismay with which not alone this congre- 
gation but this community, nor only these but with 
them other multitudes in both hemispheres and 
of various fellowships, must contemplate the act 
which takes out of this pulpit one whose teaching 
and whose life have been to uncounted hearts so 
true a message of hope and courage. I can no less 

r*43] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

easily understand the doubt and apprehension with 
which those who have most largely profited by 
them will see exceptional powers turned from their 
wonted and fruitful channels to other and untried 
tasks. But nevertheless I am persuaded that in 
parting from this our brother, whom you, his peo- 
ple, now give to his larger work, you are losing 
him only to find him anew. God has yet other 
and greater work for him to do, believe me, or He 
would not have called him to it. This fair and 
ancient city, this great State with its teeming towns 
and villages, when has there been a time in the 
progress of our national history when they have 
not left their impress, clear and strong and endur- 
ing, upon all our noblest policies ! To leave New 
England out of the history of this republic, or 
Massachusetts out of the history of New England, 
would be to leave much of its best and most poten- 
tial life out of the history of both. And we may 
well rejoice, therefore, and you especially of this 
venerable parish, that it is your rare privilege to 
give so choice a gift to that larger constituency to 
which now your minister goes. You know better 
than I can tell you how close you will always be 
to him ; and you will not refuse, I am persuaded, 
to yield him to that wider parish which is not 
bounded even by the boundaries of this ancient 
and historic Commonwealth ! 

And you, my brother, soon to be a brother in 
a dearer and holier bond, what can I trust myself 
to say to you P I wonder if you can recall as 
vividly as I the day when first we met — the old 
seminary at Alexandria, the simple but manly life 
l>44] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 

there, our talks, with fit companionship though 
few, the room in the wilderness, the Chapel and 
Prayer-hall, Sparrow and May and the dear old 
" Rah," and all the rest ! How it comes back 
again out of the mist, and how the long tale of 
years that stretch between seem but the shadow of 
a dream ! Your privilege and mine it was to begin 
our ministries under the Episcopate of one whose 
gifts and character I rejoice to believe you prized 
and loved as I did. I have been told (I do not 
know how true it is) that you have said that one 
thing which reconciled you to attempting the work 
of a bishop was that you would like to try and be 
such a bishop as he was. Am I blinded by filial 
affection when I say that I believe you have set 
before you no unworthy model ? and may I tell 
this people, though I know well how your rare 
humility will resent it, how profoundly I am per- 
suaded that, succeeding, as you do, one who has 
given you a noble example of entire devotion to 
duty, every best attribute of the Episcopate will 
find in you its worthy illustration ? Whatever 
have been the limitations of your sympathy here- 
tofore, I know that you will henceforth seek to 
widen its range and enlarge its unfailing activities, 
and taking with you that singular and invariable 
magnanimity which, under the sorest provocation, 
has made it impossible to nourish a resentment or 
to remember an injustice, you will, I know too, 
show to the people of your charge that yours is a 
charity born not of indifference but of love — for 
Christ, for your clergy, and for your flock. He 
who has endowed you with many exceptional gifts 

[245] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

has given you one, I think, which is best among 
them all. It is not learning, nor eloquence, nor 
generosity, nor insight, nor the tidal rush of impas- 
sioned feeling which will most effectually turn the 
dark places in men's hearts to light, but that 
enkindling and transforming temper which forever 
sees in humanity, not that which is bad and hate- 
ful, but that which is lovable and redeemable — 
that nobler longing of the soul which is the inde- 
structible image of its Maker. It is this — this 
enduring belief in the redeemable qualities of the 
vilest manhood — which is the most potent spell 
in the ministry of Christ, and which, as it seems to 
me, you have never for an instant lost out of yours ! 

Go with it, then, my brother, to the large tasks 
and larger flock that now await you. We who 
know and love you, through and through, thank 
God for this gift to the Episcopate ; and not least 
do we thank Him for all the graces of uncomplain- 
ing patience, and self-respecting humility, and utter 
absence of all bitterness and wrath and anger and 
clamor and evil-speaking which have shone in you 
in such rare and unfailing constancy. If there are 
those who to-day misread you, we are persuaded 
that they will not do so long. And for yourself, 
believe me, these, your clergy and your people as 
they are henceforth to be, who, of whatever school 
or opinion, greet you one and all to-day, as you 
take on this your high office, with such undivided 
love and loyalty — these will prove to you how 
warm is the place in all their hearts to which they 
wait to welcome you ! May God in giving you 
their love give you no less their prayers, and so 

[2+6] 



MISSION AND COMMISSION 

the grace and courage that you will always need! 
How heavy the load, how great the task, and above 
all — for that I think is the bitterest element in a 
bishop's life — how inexpressibly lonely the way ! 
And yet, said one whose office, as an Apostle 
describes it, is that of " the Bishop and Shepherd 
of our souls, " — and yet, " I am not alone because 
the Father is with me." May He go with you 
always, even to the glorious end ! 



[H7] 



SERMON 

PREACHED AT THE CONSECRATION 
OF THE REV. ALEXANDER HAMIL- 
TON VINTON, D.D., AS BISHOP OF 
WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, AT ALL 
SAINTS' CHURCH, WORCESTER, MAS- 
SACHUSETTS, ON TUESDAY, APRIL 
22, 1902 



SERMON 



Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as My 
Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had 
said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost. — St. John, xx. 21-22. 

ST. LUKE'S account of this incident discloses 
the fact that the eleven disciples were at supper, 
and that others of the little Christian fellowship 
were with them. It must have been a moment of 
supreme perplexity, and that for a reason that does 
not lie, at first, upon the surface. Jesus was risen, 
some said, Mary and the rest. But, was He risen, 
and if He was, what then? Plainly, something 
tremendous had happened; and, no less plainly, 
if it had, their relation to their Leader was somehow 
immeasurably altered. What were they to do? 
How were they to work? Who was henceforth 
to lead them? And then He comes suddenly, 
mysteriously, silently, but with all the old and 
infinite tenderness and thoughtfulness for them. 
" He stood in the midst of them," and straightway 
calms and steadies them. " Peace be unto you." 
He shows them His hands and His side, and then, 
when terror and perplexity have suddenly been 
transfigured into ecstasy, with equal tenderness and 
wisdom He calms the ecstasy; and then He gives 
them their commission. It is with one particular 

051] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

note of it that I desire to concern myself this 
morning. Jesus does not merely say, "Steady 
yourselves, My children: be calm, and take up 
your great task. The world waits for your mes- 
sage. The time at last is ripe ; the hour has struck ; 
the nations are expectant. To a waiting world I 
send you ! " All that, in one way or another, by 
parable, miracle, and prediction, He had already 
said. But now there is something more. It is 
not merely " Go, I am sending you." Now it is, 
"As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I 

yy 

you. 

It is impossible here to ignore the force of that 
tremendous "even so" If I am reminded, at this 
point, that such force and significance as it might 
otherwise carry are qualified by the fact that the 
two terms in the Greek that stand for the words 
"sent" and "send" are not the same, I would make 
haste to say that I do not forget it. Jesus says, 
"As My Father hath sent Me" — a7recrTaX/ceV fxe; 
and then not a7roaleWco Vjucts, but irefATro) v//,a5. 
But is not this simply to recognize the fact " that 
aTTocrliXka), from which c apostle' and 'apostolate' 
are derived, refers to a mission with a definite 
commission, or rather for a definite purpose," as 
Edersheim has so clearly shown, 1 "while Tri\mo> is 
sending in a general sense " ? And above all must 
we not remember that both are elsewhere used, and 
used alike, of Christ and the disciples? And 
therefore this mere verbal difference cannot destroy 
what I have called the tremendous significance here 
of the form of Christ's words. To a handful of 

1 The Life and Times of Jesus, vol. ii, p. 614. 

[252] 



SERMON 

men who have as yet grasped but dimly their 
relation to himself, and even less clearly the work 
to which they are called, Jesus here announces its 
oneness with His own. That work of His, He 
bids them understand, is so far as yet from being 
accomplished that it is only just begun. He speaks 
of "His mission, ,, as the late great Bishop of 
Durham has with such rare learning and exquisite 
insight pointed out, "as present, not past; as 
continuing, not as concluded. He says: c As My 
Father hath sent Me,' and not merely c As My 
Father sent Me.' He declares, that is, that His 
work is not over, though the manner in which it 
is done is changed. Henceforth He is and He acts 
in those whom He has chosen. They are in Him 
sharing the fullness of His power; He is in them 
sharing in the burden of their labors. " 1 

And then the highest significance of this incom- 
parable truth is at once illustrated and emphasized 
by the act with which its enunciation is accompanied. 
"And when He had said this He breathed on them 
and said, c Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' " 

It is thus, men and brethren, that matchless 
words and matchless act reach down among the 
foundations. And to recognize what foundations 
they are which they touch, let us leave, for a 
moment, that ecclesiastical realm with which, natu- 
rally enough, our thoughts at this time may 
appropriately be occupied, and step forth for a 
little to that wider realm which is outside of it. 
If you were asked to designate or, to be more 
specific, by a single phrase to describe the con- 

1 Westcott: The Revelation of the Risen Lord, pp. 84-85. 
t 2 53 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

spicuous characteristic of our modern life, how 
would you describe it ? I think there will be little 
difference of opinion if I say that the answer to 
such a question would be, " By the note of organ- 
ization." Other ages and other civilizations have 
had their distinctive characteristic — monadic, pas- 
toral, warlike, artistic, or what not; but it has 
remained for these times and for modern thought 
and energy to express themselves mainly and 
most distinctively by forces and mechanisms that 
are organized. Just as machinery has, in such 
countless instances, taken the place of hand labor, 
and just as the man behind the machine has in so 
many other instances been reduced step by step 
below the grade of a sentient creature, to be often 
little more than a mere cog in the great and multi- 
form mechanism of the world, so it is coming to 
be, more and more, with all that which, on the 
higher planes of being and action, stands substan- 
tially for machinery. We are narrowing all the 
time, e. g., the range of professional training and 
experience; and as the old family doctor has 
almost entirely disappeared under those condi- 
tions of the modern hospital, which more and 
more classify human ailments and mechanicalize 
the methods by which they are dealt with, so is it 
all the way along, until we come to the modern 
church and its machinery, and the modern ministry 
of whatever order, and those auxiliaries which in so 
many forms are supposed to be indispensable to it. 

Well, let us own, frankly, that in one sense 
they are. The complexity of modern life cannot 
arrest itself, arbitrarily, at some purely arbitrary 
l>54] 



SERMON 

point, and insist that it will go no further. If the 
Church is to exist at all, it must exist as a real and 
visible mechanism; and not as a mere ghost in 
the world. No profounder philosophy was ever 
uttered than that homely aphorism which long ago 
declared that "we must not let the devil have all 
the good tunes " ; and what at the bottom does it 
mean but that Christ and His Kingdom are here 
in the world to claim all honest and innocent 
things by a divine touch, and then to consecrate 
them to a divine use ? That splendid argument 
of the great Apostle, in the first Epistle to the 
Corinthians, concerning meats, and drinks, and holy 
days, and the rest, to which so long the world, and 
especially (forgive me, brethren, that I must say it 
here) Puritan New England, has been blind, for 
what does it stand but this — that the office of 
Religion in the world is to redeem and disenthrall 
— not alone man, but the things which man, by 
misuse and a blind superstition, has perverted and 
degraded? And so, do I look at an army with 
its cavalry, infantry, and artillery and the rest, and 
say, "How splendid and how potent that is!" — 
do I look at a factory, with its myriad wheels and 
marvelous precision of production and say, " How 
superb and creative that is!" — do I watch the 
giant progress of that larger mechanism that 
covers a continent with iron rails and sends its 
never resting trains flying hither and thither, with 
the swift and untiring precision of the weaver's 
shuttle, and cry out, "How magnificent and all- 
inclusive that is — so must society be organized 
and correlated — nay, so must the forces of the 
[255] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



Church of God be marshaled and mutually 
adjusted for their most august tasks"? — Such a 
cry is wise and timely. Nothing is more ghastly, 
in some aspects of it, than the enormous waste of 
religious force in our generation simply because, 
for reasons and from motives which I shall not 
venture here to characterize, the children of light 
elect to furnish a daily demonstration, in this 
connection, of the words of Jesus that wiser than 
they are the children of this world. 

We have seen, it is true, in the present genera- 
tion a wide and significant though tardy recognition 
of this fact. Not often has any younger clergyman 
to whom I am speaking this morning shown an 
older one, for instance, a modern parish house, 
without being told by the latter that, in his day, 
the ministry had to do its work without any helps 
and mechanisms of that sort; nor has the elder 
always refrained from the modest intimation that 
they did not always do it so badly, either. For 
one, I am sure they did not; but neither you nor 
I can doubt that, with modern methods and 
mechanisms, they might have done it better. It 
is idle to deny, however much we may be fond of 
saying "the old is better," that, in towns and 
villages all over the land, the Church is touching 
more lives, and touching them in more quickening 
and ennobling ways, than in this land she has ever 
done before. A divine of my acquaintance, refer- 
ring to the institutional work, in a great city, of a 
parish very unlike his own (which, outside of 
maintaining its own services, was doing no work 
at all), remarked loftily that " that was not doing 

[256] 



SERMON 

the work of the Catholic Church, but pure humani- 
tarianism," which prompted some one coarsely 
but conclusively to reply that " as it was the kind 
of work that Jesus did, apparently Jesus, who was 
supposed to be the Founder of the Catholic Church, 
didn't know His own business ! " Plainly, it must 
be owned that the modern Institutional Church, 
as it has been called, in reaching out to man 
through many avenues of contact, and in recog- 
nizing the whole man as divine in his origin, and 
therefore a redeemable quantity, has been doing 
high and wise work. 

But, no less plainly, it is work of a kind the 
value of which may easily be exaggerated. Even 
if it were not true that in such work there is a 
constant tendency to worship the net and the 
drag — to say, "Look on those great buildings 
which we have builded — these libraries, and read- 
ing-rooms, and club-rooms, and the rest"; — there 
is, at any rate, as I fear it must be owned, a 
tendency to regard the work that is done in and 
through these various mechanisms as making up 
the larger part of the work of the Christian minis- 
try; and certainly there is much food for grave 
thought in the fact that, coincidently with that 
remarkable growth in institutional work in the 
modern Church of which I have spoken, it is not 
claimed, I believe, that there has been any corre- 
sponding growth, or, indeed, any growth at all, 
in the vigor, grasp, or sovereignty of the pulpit; 
nay, rather, that in many minds the decay of this 
latter has been supposed to be somehow atoned 
for by the development of the former. 

[ 2 57 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

The question is too large for discussion here, 
and I have raised it only because it is closely- 
cognate to that other and, in connection with the 
service of this day, more imminent question, 
" What is the true office and calling of the Epis- 
copate?" To that question there is one usual 
answer, as to the force and pertinency of which, 
I freely own, there is no question. " A bishop," 
it is said, "must be a man of administrative apti- 
tudes ; by which, I suppose, is meant a man who 
has had various training in the smaller diocese 
(/3lolky](tl<;, housekeeping) of a parish ; who has 
learned how to rule ; how to be just ; how to be 
patient; how to hear both sides; how to efface 
himself; how to forecast, and largely and wisely 
plan; and all the rest which is indispensable to 
good government anywhere, whether it is in a 
nursery or on a throne. A bishop, too, we are 
told, must be a leader, whether as a missionary 
in waste places, or a founder and builder of schools, 
hospitals, and the rest, in great centers. And a 
bishop, it is still further said, must be a man of 
affairs, and have his place and hold his place in 
the larger life of that world which is outside of 
parish boundaries or Episcopal routine." 

Yes, undoubtedly, all this is true enough, and 
truth which on such occasion we may wisely 
remember. And as a consequence of its wider 
and more cordial recognition, it is undoubtedly 
true, also, that the modern bishop is a very differ- 
ent personage from his predecessors. Time was, 
as it has been said, that "if a bishop in England 
had ridden in an omnibus it would have been 
[^58] 



SERMON 

regarded as a gross indecorum, if not an indecency; 
and the time might come," it has been added, 
"when if he rode in anything else it would almost 
create a public scandal. " Exaggerated as is the 
sarcasm, it is the shell of a revolution of sentiment 
of which we must all be conscious in both hemi- 
spheres. The modern ministry, whether of the 
Episcopate or any other order, is expected to be 
a rather handy, quite informal, and almost alto- 
gether secular mechanism which we may put to 
almost any task with equal fitness, and from 
which, in all alike, we expect little more than good 
business aptitudes, and a faculty for energizing 
ecclesiastical affairs along what we are wont to call 
"practical" lines. 

It would be an interesting, and I apprehend a 
somewhat startling, task to take such a conception 
of a bishop's office and put it alongside of those 
portraitures of it which we find in the pages of 
the New Testament There is no smallest doubt 
that there and then, as now, it was expected of 
the Episcopate that it should discharge an admin- 
istrative office in the Church. " And the rest," 
says the Apostle in a certain place, " will I set in 
order when I come"; 1 and when we turn to see 
what he means by such a phrase, we find that 
they are questions of methods of worship with 
which he is dealing, and especially those arising 
in the Church of Corinth, in connection with the 
Celebration of the Holy Communion. Plainly 
enough, these questions, and others like them, in 
which local tradition and local partisanship were 

1 i Cor. ii, 34. 

I>59] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

involved, were destined almost inevitably, at the 
first, to divide those of different races, and origi- 
nally of different religious beliefs ; and no less 
plainly it was the duty of one who both by his 
office and his gifts stood in a sense outside of and 
above them, to deal with them in that explicit 
and authoritative way in which, as a matter of 
fact, St. Paul did deal with them. 

But when you have collated all the passages in 
the Apostolic history which raise such issues and 
discuss them or rule upon them, it is impossible 
not to recognize that the men who laid the founda- 
tions of the Church in the world were concerned 
with other and much larger questions than those 
of mere ecclesiastical mechanism or ceremonial 
order. No man can read the Epistle to the 
Romans or the Galatians, or those discourses of 
St. Paul preserved for us in the book of the Acts 
of the Apostles, without recognizing that however 
local or comparatively insignificant the question 
with which he has to deal, circumcision, forbidden 
meats, sacred days, and the rest, he is forever lift- 
ing the discussion of them into a realm where they 
were but introductory to the declaration of great 
principles and the foreshadowing of a divine and 
inspired policy ; in other words, that the Aposto- 
late was most of all great and mighty, not for its 
definitions, or for its defense of mechanisms, but 
for its enunciation of preeminent and enduring 
principles. 

I believe it to be no less the office of the Episco- 
pate to-day. It is sometimes said of the clerical 
mind that it has no sense of proportion ; that it 
[ 260] 



SERMON 

cannot distinguish between great and small, and 
that, in dealing with questions that challenge its 
interest and its action, it is as likely to be 
engrossed with the mint and anise of an issue as 
to discover the essential truth or falsehood which 
lies at the bottom of it. I do not undertake to 
say that the imputation is just ; but I am here, if 
I have any business here at all, to maintain that such 
is not the office of a Bishop. He is often faulted 
because he will not concern himself with contro- 
versies which, at one time or another, have 
threatened to rend the Church in twain, and 
concerning which he has, we say complainingly, 
no word to speak. Well, when we have gotten 
tired, brethren, of saying that he does not speak 
because he does not dare to, it may some day 
dawn upon us that he does not speak because the 
question is really not large enough to make it 
worth while for him to concern himself with it. 

Your neighbor in the next parish uses wafer 
bread, does he, my reverend brother, and you 
have gone to your bishop to insist that he shall 
discipline him ; and the bishop is — well, quiescent 
and inert, and you are going to denounce him as 
a traitor to the Protestant religion. Well, do so 
if it will make you any happier and relieve your 
scruple of conscience. But one of these days it is 
just possible that it may dawn upon you that your 
bishop is passing sleepless nights and perplexed 
though prayerful days because, looking at the 
Church and our modern life with a little wider 
outlook than yours, he sees perils that you have 
never dreamed of — and that are much graver 

[26.] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

than the use or non-use of wafer bread ; that his 
breast is aching over problems that you have 
never recognized at all, and that his soul is ago- 
nized with fears for the hold of God on the heart 
and faith of man of which you, my brother, have 
never dreamed ! 

Ah, no ! no ! It is not merely business energy, 
nor administrative ability, nor even pulpit power 
that we want in the Episcopate. It is not alone 
the paternal temper and the sympathetic word in 
its Bishops that our times are waiting for. Some- 
where, somehow, at some time or other these men 
must, like him of whom the prophet Isaiah tells 
us — when the burden of Dumah was heard, and 
one called, " out of Seir, Watchman, what of the 
night ? Watchman, what of the night P " 1 — be 
able to answer out of whatever thick darkness 
envelops the Church and the world in some hour 
of supreme danger and supreme uncertainty, with 
that other watchman of the olden time, " The 
morning cometh " — yes, most surely cometh in 
God's own time and way — even though cc the 
night cometh also." 

In other words, men and brethren, an Episco- 
pate of true power must be an Episcopate of 
vision ! Through the sophistries of the moment, 
through the fallacies alike of superstition and 
fanaticism, the Bishop's must be an eye that 
penetrates beneath them all to those great and 
unchanging truths that underlie them all ! Noth- 
ing is more tragic in religious history, in this 
connection, than the way in which the readjust- 

1 Isaiah, xxi. II, 12. 



SERMON 

ment of men's points of view from time to time 
all the way along, in the progress of the Church, 
has seemed to threaten foundations which such a 
readjustment has at last disclosed to be only more 
sure and stable. That quality of discrimination, 
the absence of which is closely allied with that 
other absence of a sense of proportion to which I 
have already referred, has more than once men- 
aced the Church more gravely from within than 
error or enmity has menaced it without. And 
it is precisely at this point, I believe, that a 
greater, if not the greatest, office of the Episco- 
pate is to find its sphere. Its calling it is, 
supremely, in all the questions with which it is 
called to deal, to strive to see the whole rather 
than a fragment. Its office is forever to purge its 
vision from inherited opinions, from local tradi- 
tions, and most of all from personal prejudice. 
And that it may do this, its office it is most of all 
to remember how, when Jesus commissioned His 
first bishops, He breathed on them and said, 
" Receive ye the Holy Ghost I " To that mightiest 
and ever-present ministry, the ministry of the 
Holy Ghost, the Bishop, before all men, as I 
believe, is set to witness. He must take his 
questions first to the Standing Committee, if you 
please — when he can get them to advise him, 
which some of us are not always able to persuade 
them to do ! But when he has gotten through 
with them he must take his questions up to a 
much higher court than that, and on his knees 
cry out for help, and in the still hours wait and 
brood and watch for light ! 

[263] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Alas, that to all this the whole constitution of 
our modern life is so unfriendly, and so increas- 
ingly unfriendly ! Its demands are not less upon 
the Episcopate, but from day to day increasingly 
more urgent and exacting. And so, my brethren 
of this new diocese, I plead for him who is to be 
your Bishop. Do not expect or exact of him too 
much ! Do not be guilty of the crass stupidity 
of complaining that he is overlooking Diocesan 
claims if sometimes he recognizes and owns those 
larger claims that lie beyond them. Do not sup- 
pose that because he is not always on the road, 
but rather sometimes in his study, waiting there 
for light from books, from men, and most of all 
from the Holy Ghost, he is not doing Episcopal 
work. In an age which waits most of all, I 
think, for the man of courage and the man of 
vision, you must at least give him time to brace 
the one and to purge the other ! 

And to you, my brother, called to large and 
difficult and often solitary tasks, let me offer the 
loving salutations and the brotherly sympathy of 
those whose office you are soon to share. You 
come to it, they cannot but remember, bearing a 
great name and enduringly associated in the his- 
tory of the Church with ministries of rare power. 
— Massachusetts will never forget Alexander 
Hamilton Vinton, as New York will never forget 
his brother Francis. One of them made the pul- 
pit of Trinity Church, New York, to ring in 
troublous times with dauntless and enkindling 
tones, and the other helped to train for the pulpit 
of Trinity Church, Boston, the preacher, first, and 
[264] 



SERMON 

prelate, later, whose fame has girdled the world. 
Nay, more, yourself a soldier's son, you come to 
your high tasks, I am persuaded, resolved to dis- 
charge them with unswerving loyalty to God and 
His Church and with unshrinking fidelity to your 
fellow men. To you, and the Clergy and Laity 
who are to be yours, is given a unique and most 
interesting work. The Diocese and you and they 
begin that work together. It has the charm of 
that freedom which comes with opportunities 
largely new, and if it have also those difficulties 
that come from problems yet untried, you have 
in the mother who bore you, that older Massa- 
chusetts out of whose loins you came, in her 
Bishop, her Clergy, and her people, whose gener- 
ous interest already shown to you is pledge of an 
affection that will not die — in these you have, I 
say, the earnest of wise counsels and watchful 
solicitude. Go, then, to your tasks, but not with 
these alone. cc And when Jesus had spoken unto 
them, c Peace be unto you/ he breathed on them 
and said, c Receive ye the Holy Ghost/ " Foun- 
tain of Life and Strength divine, descend on this 
our brother, and abide with him forever ! 



[««s] 



SERMON 



PREACHED on ST. PHILIP & ST. JAMES'S 
DAY, MAY 1, 1902, AT THE CHURCH OF 
THE HOLY TRINITY, PHILADELPHIA 
ON THE OCCASION OF THE CONSE- 
CRATION OF THE REV. ALEXANDER 
MACKAY-SMITH, D.D., AS BISHOP 
COADJUTOR OF PENNSYLVANIA 



SERMON 



Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when He 
cometh shall find watching ; Verily I say unto you, that He 
shall gird Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and 
will come forth and serve them. — St. Luke, xii.37. 

TN the realm of art, as its students have frankly 
* recognized, the relative values of effects pro- 
duced by different modes will probably never be 
finally determined. For, behind effects and behind 
the processes that produce them, there must for- 
ever exist those inevitable and often almost 
immeasurable differences in the eye and mind that 
discern them. 

And as in art, so in literature, and so, therefore, 
in that highest literature from which I have just 
been quoting. There are not, probably, two 
people in this church this morning who would 
agree as to the impression, upon what I may call 
their religious imagination, of the different para- 
bles of Christ. Some of them are of Rembrandt- 
like effect, and appeal to that in us, as in the case 
of the Prodigal Son, which answers, I suppose, to 
what I may call, in the spiritual realm, the sense 
of color. And others are unlike painting or por- 
traiture of a broader type, but rather like an 
exquisite etching. An etching arrests, charms, 
illumines us by its element of the unexpected ; by 
[269] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

the way, in other words, by which, with one 
stroke of his burin, the artist has flashed into the 
less vivid aspects of the picture one strong line or 
feature which, by both its vigor and its surprise, 
arrests and enchains us. 

Surely, we have a very dramatic illustration of 
this in the words which I have quoted. Jesus is 
urging upon the little handful of men who were 
following Him the habit of expectancy. Out 
from the narrow lot in which he finds them He 
has been lifting their thoughts, step by step, to a 
wider vision. They are parts of a much larger 
whole than as yet they themselves had dreamt of. 
They were citizens of a much nobler and more 
eventful land and race than the Palestine or Israel 
of their own time. Into these, ere long, there 
were to break new forces and new issues. The 
wise servant, in that Divine stewardship which 
was of the household of the Kingdom of God, 
would be on the watch for these, and gird himself 
for their coming. The Master of the house was 
absent. His faithful servant would, however, find 
in that no warrant for his slumbers, but rather 
for increasing watchfulness. Absence, he would 
recognize, meant for his lord, some day, return. 
What day, did he ask ? No matter — his it was 
to watch. Ere long the return would come, and 
then . 

And then there comes that note of the unex- 
pected to which I have referred, and past which, 
I fear, our minds too often and too easily slide. 
For, "when He cometh, ,, runs the story, "He 
shall gird Himself, and make them to sit down 
[270] 



SERMON 

to meat, and serve them." But <c Really," I can 
hear some persons exclaim at that point, " it cannot 
quite mean that. Any one who reflects a moment 
must see that, construed literally, such words pre- 
sent a situation that would be — well, not to use 
too strong a term — grotesque." "May it not 
be," says the conservative conventionalist here, 
" that the pronouns in this case have gotten mis- 
placed ? Ought not the passage to read, 4 Blessed 
are those servants, whom the Lord when He 
cometh shall find watching. Verily I say unto 
you, that they shall gird themselves and make 
Him to sit down to meat, and shall come forth and 
serve Him ' ? Is not this, really, the proper and 
decorous definition of the relation of masters 
and servants, and is it conceivable that Jesus 
Christ, in any teaching of His, could have given 
us a precept which, if once we followed it, would 
make a complete overturning of the whole social 
order ? Nothing is more impressive," continues 
this conservative conventionalist, <c than the 
respect which Jesus showed to the traditional 
order of His time. In His relations to Church 
and State, alike, He scrupulously conformed to it. 
He repaired to the Temple and the Synagogue, 
and built no conventicle to draw men from them. 
He not only honored and respected sacred rite 
and social usage, but, in the latter case at any 
rate, gently chid a host who disregarded them. 
He called Himself, explicitly, c Lord and Master/ 
and as such affirmed and exercised His authority 
unreservedly. c Make the men sit down.' c Give 
ye them to eat.' c Gather up the fragments.' 
L 2 7i ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

This is a master's speech to servants ; and his 
servants owned and yielded to its note of com- 
mand. Plainly it is quite impossible that, by any 
act of such a Being, He precipitated into inex- 
tricable confusion the social order of His time ! " 

Well, as to that, I shall not undertake to say. 
But this, at any rate, is certain : You can not 
touch, here, the record. No scrutiny of the text 
of this incident has ever undertaken to invalidate 
it, or to modify it. Critically, it can not be pre- 
tended that, if the narrative stands at all, it does 
not stand precisely in the form in which here it is 
given to us. And if on any other ground we 
attack it, as, e.g., that it is intrinsically improbable 
that a master returning from a wedding-feast 
should bid his servants to sit down to meat and 
should serve them, then the interesting question 
arises, What are you going to do with that other 
narrative, of Christ's washing of His disciples' 
feet? That is a much more inconvenient inci- 
dent, as a social precedent, than this ; and as to 
that I have yet to learn that even the most 
destructive criticism has dared to raise a question. 

There comes, then, into the horizon, at this 
point, a fact of large and it must frankly be 
owned of revolutionary import. In an age which 
by every method and mechanism enlarged and 
exaggerated the dignity, the august remoteness, 
the personal aloofness of the sovereign, the ruler, 
the master, Christ affirms a law of His sovereignty 
and rulership, of absolute novelty. This master 
of the house, who returns at midnight to find his 
servants weary and exhausted with their vigilance, 
[272] 



SERMON 

does not dismiss them with a curt nod, and hasten 
past them to his couch. He makes them to sit 
down to meat, and tarries to serve them. Amaz- 
ing as it may seem to any one who could regard 
to-day such an act as utterly fatal to a proper 
domestic discipline, this to the mind of Jesus is 
the expression of its highest ideal. 

Well, men and brethren, how is it with us to- 
day, and how is it especially with reference to that 
particular office to which we have come here to-day, 
to consecrate our brother ? That office, we hold, 
and hold rightly, is an office of high dignity, of 
venerable, nay Divine origin, and of most august 
sanctions. If any have come here expecting me 
to exalt that dignity, to defend and demonstrate 
that Divine origin, or to assert upon most certain 
warrant of Holy Scripture those august sanctions, 
I beg to say that, if I do not do so, it is not 
because I do not hold to every one of them. 
Whether we reach our conclusions as to the Epis- 
copate by the road traveled by the Fathers or by 
Principal Hatch, we are equally confronted, I am 
persuaded, with the evidence that, in the language 
of the Preface to the Ordinal, " It is evident unto 
all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and 
ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time 
there have been these Orders of Ministers in 
Christ's Church, bishops, priests, and deacons. 
Which offices were evermore had in such reverend 
estimation, that no man might presume to execute 
any of them, except he were first called, tried, 
examined, and known to have such qualities as 
are required for the same ; and also by public 
l>73] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 



prayer, with imposition of hands were approved 
and admitted thereunto by lawful authority." 1 
This, which has been this Church's position from 
its beginnings, is no less its position to-day ; and 
here, at any rate, without further debate or argu- 
ment, I shall venture to take it for granted that 
it is. It is another and a very different question 
which I am seeking to raise this morning, and, 
with most scrupulous respect for the historical 
question, a much higher one ! Not, Where did 
we get the Episcopate, or How has it come down 
to us, but, What is its highest ideal ? Not, How 
may we who are bishops, or our brother who, 
please God, is soon to become one, most con- 
clusively demonstrate our tactical or ministerial 
legitimacy, but, How may we interpret and illus- 
trate, in our work among men, the highest mean- 
ing, purpose, and spirit of that office ? 

It is most surely not my purpose, let me say, 
in attempting to indicate that highest meaning and 
spirit, to obscure or undervalue those other aspects 
of it which are administrative, executive, or func- 
tional. Indeed, I do not believe that there has 
been any other period in the world's religious his- 
tory that has more substantially contributed than 
our own, if so much so, to the demonstration of 
the value of these powers and functions of the 
Episcopate. The age that saw the institution of 
the Episcopate was an age that was wonted to both 
paternal and monarchical forms of government, and 
that found little difficulty, because of any previous 
political ideas or traditions, in accepting an office 

1 Preface to the Ordinal; Book of Common Prayer, p. 509. 
t 2 74] 



SERMON 

and an authority which in primitive, as in later 
ages, largely expressed them both. But when 
Episcopacy came to this land it came to a people 
who, whether they were Quaker or Puritan, Hugue- 
not or Covenanter, had alike disowned and re- 
nounced traditions and polities of which prelacy, 
let us not refuse to-day frankly and fairly to admit, 
was a most unlovely and intolerant illustration. 
They were satisfied that, of whatever value or war- 
rant bishops had been in other lands and ages, they 
were not wanted, and with the democratic theories 
of a republic were wholly incongruous, here. Well, 
these non-Episcopal brethren have been working 
out their theories with untrammeled freedom, and 
with unwearied zeal, and wherever they have not 
recreated some respectable simulacrum of the Epis- 
copate, the most candid and competent among 
them have unreservedly owned to its value and 
substantial necessity. By many ingenuities, and 
with clever substitutes, they have sought to meet 
that inevitable demand for an ultimate center of 
authority, both executive and judicial, which the 
Episcopate alone can furnish. Two committees 
from different Hebrew synagogues waited not long 
ago in a neighboring city upon its bishop to sub- 
mit to him a question of considerable delicacy, and 
to ask for his counsel and judgment, prefacing their 
errand with the statement, " We have no bishop ; 
and so we come to you." 

It is not the recognition, therefore, of its place 
in the religious mechanism of our modern life for 
which the Episcopate is waiting, I repeat, or need 
wait. Time with its inevitable reactions is, day 
[>75] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

by day, more and more clearly demonstrating the 
error of those who in this, as in some other things, 
reformed too much ; and the interesting and in- 
spiring province, as I believe profundly, of our 
age it is to be, to demonstrate the rare wisdom and 
genius of those who, when here its survival was 
threatened, both from without and from within, 
rescued the Episcopate from extinction, and gave 
it back to the Church in this land. By no other 
mechanism is the reunion of Christendom and the 
organic upbuilding of the Kingdom of God in the 
world so distinctly brought within the realm of 
imminent probabilities. 

But if this be true, the question which I have 
already raised recurs with increasing force. If it 
be true that the Episcopate is rinding a place and 
a worth in the consciousness and in the apprecia- 
tion of men, how best may it commend itself to 
the confidence and acceptance of those to whom 
it comes ? There is no other question, in this 
connection, as I conceive, at this time of such 
paramount importance ; for there is no other con- 
nection in which the errors or infirmities of the 
Episcopate have been more conspicuous or more 
deplorable. 

It is not hard to account for such a fact. It was 
inevitable, I suppose, that an institution which 
came into being coincidentally with the imperial 
supremacy of the Roman Empire should early 
have taken on the notes and the tone of ancient 
Roman rule. As a matter of fact, the submission, 
in the fourth century, of the Emperor Constantine 
to the Christian faith, the proclamation of Chris- 
[-76] 



SERMON 

tianity as the established religion of the Empire, 
and the recognition of the Church as its official 
form and representative, were simply revolutionary. 
Until then the Church and its bishops had been 
hated, hounded, and persecuted on every hand ; 
and Rome, " too exhausted to conquer her own 
corruption, or to assimilate her later conquests," 
did not hesitate, as late as the middle of the third 
century, to assail its representatives and to attempt 
to destroy not only its disciples but the source of 
its life and inspiration, its Holy Writings. But 
with the conversion of Constantine all this was 
changed. "It is very difficult to realize, much 
harder to describe, and impossible," as a modern 
scholar 1 has indicated, " to overestimate the changes 
thus brought about." The organization of the 
Church was drawn into close resemblance to the 
imperial constitution, crystallized in that form, 
and supported by the law and authority of the 
imperial power. Instead of being persecuted, the 
Church was legalized ; instead of being forced into 
obscurity, it was made an arm of the State ; in- 
stead of its officers being most exposed to a hostile 
power, they became the most exalted representa- 
tives of that power. Christianity was not only 
licensed, it became the sole authorized religion. 
Its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, 
its creed and organizations, "and above all its lead- 
ers and rulers," became matters and personages of 
imperial significance. 

And " startling as this change was in itself, it 
was nothing short of revolutionary in its effects. 

1 Wells : The Age of Charlemagne, pp. 16, 17. 
[*77] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

New standards and ideas, new aims and objects, 
new purposes and methods, new views and con- 
siderations at once entered into the mind and will 
of the Church. Emphasis was laid upon the exi- 
gencies of the economy of a Visible Church, which 
became the substitute for the Kingdom of God. 
There arose the necessity for an external system 
capable of being externally administered," and, 
most of all) for that was inevitable in an age in 
which the external, the formal, the ceremonial, and, 
as the culmination of the whole, the function and 
the functionary, became so vital and central a part 
of the whole mechanism) there came to be that visi- 
ble exaltation and adornment, that homage and 
submission, those autocratic and imperious char- 
acteristics by which, alas, for a thousand years and 
more the Episcopate was most of all distinguished. 

I do not say that, in all that time, there was no 
voice raised to point out the grotesque incongruity 
of such a conception, whether of the Church or of 
its ministry, and most of all of its Episcopate, 
with either primitive authority or primitive tradi- 
tion. Once and again, and again, was some clear 
and courageous note uplifted to cry aloud against 
an arrogance and a tyranny, a luxury and a pre- 
tension, for which, in all the ages that had been 
made resplendent with apostolic ministers and 
episcopates, there was no remotest warrant. Yet, 
for long and dark ages — dark, indeed, whatever 
light dimly shone throughout them — such voices 
were lifted up in vain. 

" But of what avail is it," it may be asked at 
this point, " to revert to times like these, and 

t»7«] 



SERMON 

memories so unlovely and so unedifying ? Surely, 
the Church at any rate, whose children we, here, 
this morning are, has purged herself of these 
incongruities, and foresworn forever these traves- 
ties of the Episcopal Office." Alas, men and 
brethren, concerning this we may not speak too 
confidently. How far it may be true that, were 
it removed from the pressure of a civilization 
which has largely outgrown medievalism, whether 
in Church or State, the modern Episcopate would 
revert to mediaeval forms and ideas, I will not 
undertake to say ; but no one who has watched 
its history, for example, in our mother Church, 
for the last three hundred years, can fail to see 
how easy it has been to surround it with a state, 
and to encumber it with secular relations and obli- 
gations, which no thinking man who is at a suffi- 
cient remove from it to judge the whole situation 
impartially can pretend to have contributed in the 
slightest degree to its spiritual growth and leader- 
ship. A rare man, whose rarest gifts have made 
all of us on this side of the Atlantic who can 
recognize those gifts to love and honor him, being 
chosen the other day to an Anglican Episcopate, 
sought to unburden himself of an episcopal palace, 
in a remote and inaccessible rural neighborhood, 
whose maintenance and occupancy would greatly 
tax his resources, and isolate, and so abridge, his 
influence : but this most sane position was at once 
met with a vehement protest against the profane 
" modern " who would surrender a notable his- 
toric monument, in order to utilize its proceeds 
for merely practical purposes ! The Episcopate, 

l>79] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

it was urged, must maintain itself with a certain 
state, and pomp, and ceremony, if it were to main- 
tain its influence ; and to sacrifice these was to 
belittle a great office, if not to degrade it. 

It is impossible to reflect, for one moment, 
upon the conception of that office which must 
exist in such a class of minds without seeing, if 
no more, how far that conception has drifted from 
anything which we learn of it in the pages of the 
New Testament. There is a good deal said of it 
there, and in some instances, also, with a good deal 
of detail. The habits, the character, the record, 
the domestic relationships of a bishop, are defined 
with considerable minuteness ; but, through it all, 
there is no remotest trace of any hint that pledges 
it to state, or cost, or splendor. On the contrary, 
when the Church, in that Form set forth in the 
Ordinal which we are using here this morning, 
would draw for us her ideal portrait of a bishop, 
she frames it in these incomparable words of its 
Epistle in which the foremost figure of all her 
first Apostles exclaims : " I have coveted no man's 
silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves 
know that these hands have ministered unto my 
necessities, and to them that were with me. I 
have showed you all things, how that so laboring 
ye ought to support the weak, and to remember 
the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is 
more blessed to give than to receive.' , 1 

We turn the picture backward until it stands 
beside that other in our text which Christ Him- 
self drew, and lo ! the two are one ! The Lord 

1 Acts, xx. 33-35. 

[ 280 ] 



SERMON 

who girds Himself and serves the servants who 
serve Him — this was the Apostle's conception of 
a true Episcopate — and it must be ours ! The 
problems of the Church's modern life and hold 
upon the hearts of men, in other words, must find 
their last and best solution, not in theological 
formulas or in ecclesiastical ceremonial, but in 
lowliest personal service. The faith of earlier 
ages, whose loss we are some of us wont to 
deplore, must come back by means of the service 
and the sacrifice of earlier ages ; and the true 
bishop, the true priest, the true deacon, must 
be not one who can trace his lineage down by- 
long and unbroken lines of hierarchal succession ; 
but, most of all, he who can prove that with the 
lineage there has thrilled down from the heart of 
the Holy Ghost on high the Divine Life and the 
Divine Love ! For such a Ministry the Church 
and the world alike are waiting, and when for their 
awakening and redemption it shall be multiplied, 
the dawn of the millennial glory is not far distant ! 

My brother greatly beloved — soon to be a 
brother by a dearer and holier bond — to you, 
thank God, all this can have no strange or unfa- 
miliar sound. As you must remember this 
morning, you and I came first really to know one 
another when we stood side by side in a neighboring 
city, and strove together for God's least and, of 
their fellow-men, oftenest forgotten ones. For 
nearly seven years you went in and out among 
them, in prisons, in almshouses, in hospitals, and 
in the crowded homes of men, and won from all 
who knew your work — in fact if not in name the 
[281] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

work of a city missionary — equal love and honor. 
Will you fault me if I say to this people, so soon 
to be your people, that, of all the various posts of 
usefulness and distinction which you have held, 
this gave you the best and highest training for your 
great office P Will my brethren, whether in your 
office as a priest, or mine as a bishop, challenge me 
if I say that, greater than administrative capacity, 
greater than various learning, greater than pulpit 
power, greater than even the genius of leadership, 
in the Episcopate, is the heart of love and the hand 
of brotherhood which are alone the gift of the grace 
of Jesus Christ ? I congratulate this diocese that 
you bring to it those other gifts which I have 
named, in rare and high degree ; but I congratulate 
it most of all for this that, to serve and not to rule, 
to gird yourself and make the lowliest sit down to 
the Master's table, this will be your highest joy ! 

And because this is so, even you can not quite 
know the inexpressible delight that it is to me to 
see you standing here to-day. When, not long 
ago, a presbyter of this diocese, naming an honored 
name in that from which I come, said to me : "And 
so you would not let us have such an one for our 
bishop ? " I answered, with the indignation that 
I felt : " Do you think that there is anything that, 
if he could give it, my father's son would not give 
to Pennsylvania? Verily you do not know me!" 
Ah, what memories come thronging back upon me 
as I stand here, and look, my brother, into your 
face this morning! It is verily to a great inherit- 
ance that you have come, and they were giants in 
whose footsteps you are to follow. Think of that 
[ 282 ] 



SERMON 

beautiful figure that once walked these streets as 
its first bishop, and whose beautiful life and wise 
statesmanship laid the foundations upon which your 
honored predecessors, all along, have builded! 
William White came to a great people, soon to 
grow into a great commonwealth, and lived and 
died not more loved and honored by his own flock 
than by Christians of every name, and, most of all, 
I think, by that great Society of Friends from whose 
loins was to spring, shall I be too bold if I say, the 
most illustrious of his successors ? Such are the 
men whose office and work you are to take up, my 
brother, and surely not the least noble or lovable 
among them all is that rare man whose absence 
we most of all deplore to-day, and whose example 
of utter and single devotion to his work, whose 
large patience and beautiful modesty, whose singular 
and preeminent equity of rule, will make his Epis- 
copate an enduring model for all your future. It 
is no small inspiration, if all else were wanting, to 
follow such a leader and to serve, and to serve with, 
such a colleague. 

Nor with him alone. This body soon to be 
your faithful clergy, and that rare constituency 
which has made the laity of Pennsylvania at once 
the envy and example of the whole Church, these 
wait to welcome you and to follow where you may 
lead. You bring here, as I am glad to remember, 
sympathies and aims that are larger than the mere 
officialisms of your office ; and wider, a great deal, 
thank God, than the narrow circumferences of your 
episcopal jurisdiction. Do not be afraid either to 
exhibit or to exercise them ! Jesus Christ has not 
[283] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

called you to be a prelate to be carried about in a 
chair with peacock feathers waving over your head, 
but first of all a man, and then a man in Christ 
Jesus. Not always will your work be easy or 
interesting, not always free from criticism, misap- 
prehension, or human antagonisms. But no matter ! 
You know who has called you. You know who 
goes with you. You know who will show you the 
way. When one who once stood here as pastor 
of this people was called to be Bishop of Massa- 
chusetts, and I sent him my word of lovinggreeting, 
these were the words that he sent back: " My dear 
Henry, I thank you with all my heart! ... I did 
not think I ever should be a bishop ! but who can 
tell? It seemed as if I had nothing to do but to 
follow, where the Leading went before." And 
what was highest wisdom for Phillips Brooks, and 
for saints and martyrs, and heroes all along, may 
well be yours and mine, my brother! We have 
nothing to do but to follow where the Leading goes 
before ! May He who is the Leader make your 
way His way, and so a way of joyous service, till 
the glorious end ! 



[a«4] 



SERMON 



PREACHED AT GRACE CHURCH 
UTICA, NEW YORK, ON OCTOBER 2 
1902, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CON- 
SECRATION OF THE REV. CHARLES 
TYLER OLMSTED, D.D., AS BISHOP CO- 
ADJUTOR OF CENTRAL NEW YORK 



SERMON 



Jesus saith unto Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me more than these ? — St. John t xxi. 15. 

THERE is a fine discernment in the distinc- 
tion here, as Sadler I think it is who makes 
it, between the official disclosures of Jesus after 
His resurrection, and that other, which is per- 
sonal. Before — as we have accounts in this same 
Gospel- — the Master had shown Himself to His 
disciples, and had spoken to them, nay, had 
breathed on them ; and there is no reason to doubt 
that on one, at least, of these occasions the apostle 
St. Peter had been present. But here the occa- 
sion was quite different, and it was utterly informal. 
Indeed, in its tender and informal note it has 
hardly its match anywhere in St. John's whole 
story. The disciples have gone back to their old 
calling, and Peter has recovered his old self-con- 
fidence. " There were together," the story runs, 
"Simon Peter and Thomas, Nathaniel of Cana, 
the sons of Zebedee and two others. " With a 
rare and habitual modesty, you see St. John does 
not name himself. "Simon Peter saith unto them, 
c I go a fishing.'" It is as though he had said, 
"What is the use of idling here? Come, let us 
do something. I am going back to the task and 
business in which I am no novice." And the 
[287] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

others — not leaders but followers — without his 
initiative, whatever else that he had not they had 
— at once replied, "We also go with thee." And 
then the rest of the scene — was there ever any- 
thing like it for exquisite pathos and simplicity? 
They toil all night, and take nothing. The morn- 
ing breaks; and behold, someone is standing on 
the shore and calling to them. "Children," — 
children, word of infinite tenderness and love, — 
"have ye any meat? Cast the net on the right 
side of the ship." In desperation they heed that 
distant bidding, and draw their net — or, rather, 
"are not able to draw it for the multitude of the 
fishes." And then, I think, there is struck the 
most dramatic and pathetic note of all. Who was 
the stranger who knew their fisher's art so much 
better than they themselves did ? None of them 
can identify him until one, who describes himself 
as " that disciple whom Jesus loved," exclaims, 
"It is — it is the Lord!" A quality surer than 
vision, more penetrating than insight, more 
unerring than cleverness, had discerned and recog- 
nized One to whom his heart went out with inex- 
tinguishable homage and devotion, and Jesus is 
discovered, so to speak, by St. John. 

And then there follows the scene upon the 
shore — the fire; the fish upon the coals; the 
fishermen and Him who so lately had been their 
Master ; and the absolute unreserve of all the 
talk. I recall it in this detail, because, without 
taking note of that, we cannot, I think, under- 
stand it. It is impossible to read it all without 
seeing that Jesus is striving to win from one whose 
[288] 



SERMON 

great gifts and altogether exceptional powers as a 
leader he unquestionably recognized, some expres- 
sion that would be without the note of extrava- 
gance or exaggeration. " And when they had 
dined Jesus said " — and so on. The man whom 
He interrogates must be, for the moment at any 
rate, plagued by no physical wants, restless with 
no consciousness of exhaustion or craving for 
food — at ease; in repose; and capable of think- 
ing and speaking with deliberation. 

And then comes that searching question, 
" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than 
these?" I confess I have been amazed at the 
often and apparently easy misapprehension of 
those words "more than these." They are very 
commonly read as though Jesus were asking Peter 
if his (Peter's) love to Him (Christ) was greater 
than his (Peter's) love for his brethren, who were 
there with. him. On the contrary, I think there 
can be no doubt that the words are a rebuke ; 
and that their sting lay in the fact that they 
recalled protestations which had been followed 
by the basest perfidy, as when St. Peter had said, 
"Lord, though all men" — these Thy disciples and 
all the rest — " should be offended in Thee, yet 
will not I !" And then had followed those vehe- 
ment boasts of his superior and solitary loyalty, 
too soon eclipsed by equally impassioned denials. 
" Then Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, 
I know not the man." And so, when Jesus 
meets His disciple for the first time informally, 
and speaks to him unreservedly, He gently but 
clearly recalls boasts of a devotion which never 
[289] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

flowered into heroism, and comparisons with 
others' fidelity which were soon discredited by a 
supreme baseness. 

All this seems, verily, far enough away from 
such an occasion as this, and such antecedents as 
those which meet us here (for I want to honor as 
it deserves the cheerful self-surrender which brings 
our brother-elect to this office), and yet there is one 
note in it which has a very close relation to this 
occasion, and which is not unworthy of our recog- 
nition. St. Peter was more than once cowardly, 
but he was not essentially dishonest. When he 
cries, " Yea Lord, though all men should be offended 
in Thee, yet will not I," it is not swagger, it is the 
utterance of a profound conviction. If other men 
run away, he means, even if left quite alone, to 
stay behind, and to show the world what a true 
disciple ought to be ! 

There is a resemblance here, men and brethren, 
between the new and untried disciple and the new 
and untried Bishop of profound significance and of 
wide and prevalent frequency. It has often oc- 
curred to me to wonder what would be the out- 
come if we could get the presbyters and deacons 
to outline for us, not their ideas of the Bishop's 
office and work, but their ideals. It would be still 
more interesting if, before he entered upon his 
office, we could persuade one who had been chosen 
to the office of a Bishop to tell us what kind of a 
Bishop he proposed to be ! Of one thing I can 
assure you with absolute certainty. His portrai- 
ture of the ideal Bishop would be — as indeed it 
ought to be —absolutely unlike the career and 
[290] 



SERMON 

character of any Bishop whom he ever knew — 
which indeed is only another way of saying, what 
ought to be forever true, that one's ideal of an 
office or a calling is higher and more resplendent 
than any realization of it which one has ever 
known ! 

But I have not yet reached the point at which 
I am aiming, and which I regard as preeminently 
pertinent to the service of this day. When St. 
Peter says, " If all shall be offended in thee, yet 
will I never be offended," I do not understand 
him to be pluming himself so much upon his cour- 
age as upon his discernment. He could recog- 
nize his Master, if others could not, and once he 
had done that, there could be no doubt about his 
line of action. 

Well, is not this the tone of the novice, always ? 
There are a great many men who have no ambi- 
tion to wear a Bishop's honors, or to bear a Bishop's 
burdens. But they would like to exercise his 
office for a little while, just to show those whose it 
is how it ought to be administered. " If I were 
a Bishop I would stop this ; I would enjoin that. 
I would compel obedience to this rubric, and waive 
compliance with that." In other words, my 
brother, my sister, presbyter, deacon, layman, lay- 
woman, whoever you are who are so fond of say- 
ing this, you would administer the Episcopal office 
paternally. Well, the office of the Episcopate is a 
paternal office, and the Church may well pray God 
that the paternal note may never disappear out of 
it ! When I was first consecrated, I remember 
very well how startled I was to be addressed, both 

[*9i] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

in letters and by word of mouth, by a dear and 
honored priest now gone to his reward — I mean the 
Rev. Dr. John Henry Hobart, son of that great 
Bishop the luster of whose deeds still lingers in 
this Diocese of Central New York, in which and 
as its Bishop when it was the part of the undivided 
mother Diocese he ministered — as "dear and right 
reverend father" Dr. Hobart was old enough to 
be my father, and I looked up to him with unmixed 
reverence and love ; but I could never persuade 
him to drop that form of speech, which, as he said, 
expressed to him a very precious and sacred attri- 
bute of the Episcopate. It does ! Forever it 
ought to ! The Bishop who cannot go to his 
clergy and people in the paternal spirit had better 
not go at all ! 

And yet, when this is said, all is not said, nor, 
as I cannot but feel very keenly, no single word 
of that which greatly needs to be said. When we 
are criticizing Bishops and complaining that they 
do not do this, or stop that, or say the other, we 
are, oftener than otherwise, talking or writing in 
utter forgetfulness of the limitations under which 
they are constrained to act. Yes, the Episcopal 
office is a paternal office — first and most. But it 
is a constitutional office as well, and our brother 
here, soon to be consecrated, is called to be a 
Bishop whose powers are bounded and limited, 
conditioned and qualified, at every turn, by certain 
canonical provisions which he may indeed despise, 
but which he cannot disregard. Presently we shall 
hear him take the oath of Conformity. Do you 
remember how it runs ? "In the name of God 
[292] 



SERMON 

Amen. I, Charles Tyler Olmsted, chosen Bishop 
Coadjutor of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
the Diocese of Central New York, do promise con- 
formity and obedience to the Doctrine, Discipline, 
and Worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America." Do we know 
what that means ? Do the brethren of the laity, 
who are so very fond of saying that the Bishop 
ought to do this, or that, or the other thing that, 
as the Church is at present constituted, the Bishop 
cannot do unless they themselves — the laity to- 
gether with some other or others — will first initiate 
the process, which must be a canonical process, and 
which is alone competent in the premises ? I am 
not now raising or discussing the question whether 
or no the constitution of the Church, which ordi- 
narily restrains the Bishop from acting otherwise 
than by canonical process, is right and wise — 
though as to that I have not myself the smallest 
doubt ; — but I am simply endeavoring to make 
you recognize the fact that this our brother is com- 
ing this morning to this high office in limine. In 
the first place, he is to be a Bishop Coadjutor, and 
the policy of this Diocese must continue to be 
determined by him who is its diocesan Head, and 
who, during all these years, has ruled with such 
rare wisdom and tenderness. 

But even if he were not an element, or if at 
some future time — long may it be distant — the 
Bishop should see fit to make an assignment of all 
his powers to his Coadjutor, that Coadjutor cannot 
toss the canon law of the Church, whether in the 
Digest, or in the Constitution and Canons of this 

[ 2 93 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Diocese, over the wall, and say, " Now, I am 
going to show the American Church how a Dio- 
cese ought to be governed and administered ! " 
From the moment that he takes the oath that I 
have recited he will be under the law, with all the 
rest of us ; and when I use that phrase I do not 
mean all the rest of us Bishops merely, but the 
whole Church, and all its members and officers. 
There is a fine lesson for the Episcopate in the 
words of that soldier and commander of the Gos- 
pels, u I am a man under authority, and I say to 
this man, Go, and he goeth," 1 and the rest. 
That is an ideal statement of the relations of 
authority to service ; and it is significant that the 
greatest empire that the sun has ever shone upon 
so early recognized it ! Rome's leaders were 
chosen because they were willing to be Rome's 
servants ; and constitutional government, whether 
in the State or in the Church, early learned to 
say, " I am a man under authority." 

I am saying all this because the times make it 
necessary that I should say it. We have wit- 
nessed the growth — rapid, impassioned, and 
extravagant sometimes ■ — all over the face of the 
earth of the idea of Constitutional government, 
and if you wish to see how rapidly it has grown 
in the Church, I advise you to trace the story 
of that growth as it is recorded in the Jour- 
nals of our Diocesan and General Conventions. 
It is here, as it is in the wider realm of civic 
affairs, where there still survives the curious expec- 
tation that you may make men virtuous — or 

1 St. Matthew, viii. 9. 

[294] 



SERMON 

generous, or anything else — by law. Some day 
I wish we might discover some curious and patient 
priest or layman who would unearth for us the 
history, and above all the efficacy, of Canons com- 
pulsory, imposing, e.g., upon parishes the obliga- 
tion of making particular collections. There is 
not a priest within the sound of my voice at this 
moment who does not know that it is the habit 
of the reverend clergy to brush aside the demands 
of such canons as if they were so many imperti- 
nent mosquitoes ! / did so, when I was a parish 
rector, habitually, and I don't believe, brethren, 
that the majority of you, in this particular, are 
any more obedient than I was ! 

Well, what is the significance of such a fact ? 
That we must deride and disobey all law ? Nay, 
but that we may easily have too much of it ; and 
that if you would have a Bishop act with prompt- 
ness, decision, and independence, you must take 
care how you tie him up too much with canonical 
restrictions ! 

I cannot permit myself to say this, however, 
without adding straightway that I do not think 
that has been the tendency of the Church in its 
canonical enactments with reference to Bishops. 
On the whole, I think it must be owned that (e.g., 
in the House of Deputies of the General Conven- 
tion) there has been, as a rule, a very filial disposition 
to recognize the paternal relation of a Bishop to his 
flock, and to protect him in the exercise of it. But, 
alas, Bishops are not angels, though there is 
primitive warrant for calling them so ; and it is not 
surprising that people who are living their secular 
[ 2 95 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

lives under a constitutional government should 
feel constrained sometimes to invoke its protection 
in matters of ecclesiastical government, when they 
find Episcopal authority exercised imperiously or 
intolerantly. 

But the fact which thus far I have labored to 
bring out, and which on such a day as this we may 
well look frankly in the face, — the fact I mean 
that, after all, a Bishop does not rule or serve 
independently of canonical obligations which are 
common to him, to his clergy, and to all the people, 
— this fact is not the whole case, nor indeed the 
most precious part of it. It is a very significant 
feature of the incident from which I have taken my 
text that, though Jesus addresses St. Peter with a 
challenge which involves a comparison, Simon 
Peter declines that comparison altogether. " Simon, 
son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? " 
asks Christ, and all the answer that He can draw 
from Simon Peter is, "Yea, Lord, thou knowest 
that I love thee." And again, "Yea, Lord, thou 
knowest that I love thee," and finally, "Lord, thou 
knowest all things ; thou knowest that I love thee." 
St. Peter had no longer the audacity to institute 
comparisons, but he knew his own heart, and he 
knew (for that, I think, is the thing of preeminent 
significance in the whole interview) that Love could 
unerringly translate itself, so that whatever other 
spell a man might strive to serve with, that would 
make itself intelligible first to Him who knoweth 
all things, and then to the least of His children ! 

It is this, men and brethren, that must be our 
supreme strength whenever we take up any great 
[296] 



SERMON 

task for Christ. I cannot imagine one's coming to 
such tasks as that to which we are soon to set apart 
our brother, without shrinking and dismay. As 
one looks down the long beadroll which makes 
up the succession in our American Church, he 
comes, over and again, and again, upon names 
which have, in their story, a note of august achieve- 
ment. "Am I to strive to be like such an one, or 
such an one? " asks the young and untried Bishop, 
as he scans the portrait-gallery of these illustrious 
worthies. Nay, my brother, there is no one of 
them who is worthy of your imitation — so long, at 
any rate, as there lives Another cc whose they are 
and whom they serve." And the thing of most 
profound import to you and me is the method which, 
in dealing with St. Peter and others who erred, He, 
the chief Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, pursued. 
There fell into my hand, the other day, a cc Manual 
for Confessors," recommended, I grieve to say, by 
persons in the Orders of the Church whose sons 
we are. I have no intention, here, of dwelling 
upon its characteristics, which had in them every 
note of vicious and mischievous suggestion ; but 
this question persistently recurred to me : Jesus 
dealt with all sorts of sinful people, and, as in the 
case of Simon Peter, with those whose perfidy had 
in it an especial and utter infamy ; and in all His 
dealing there is just one note ! We have it here 
in this case of his recreant disciple, and how He 
rings the changes on it ! Ours is an age which, 
day by day, makes more and more of culture. Sin, 
we are told, is only a form of ignorance — as 
though the people whose culture was the most 
C 2 97 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

splendid and the most acute — I mean the Greeks 
— had not been the most infamous ! And then we 
turn back to the Cross of Christ, and touch there 
the mightiest spell of all ! Something there there 
is which finds its potentiality quite apart from 
learning or acquired graces, and something there 
which, after all, was far the largest part of the power 
of the Son of Man. 

Nothing can take the place of it in the life of 
the Church to-day ; and mechanicalized as we 
seem to be in danger of becoming, some new 
piece of machinery appealing every day to the 
individual Rector or Sunday-school worker, I am 
not sure but that the Episcopate exists, quite as 
much as for anything else, to bring back to men's 
minds the image of Christ, by bringing back to 
them His call for love. We have changed many 
things, as we believe for the better, in this modern 
life of ours ; but I am not sure that the tendency 
of many of our changes has not been to isolate 
the Pastor from the people. There are very few 
Rectors in this Church this morning who will 
care to contradict the statement that the ordinary 
experience of the commencement of a pastorate 
or rectorship may be described as a " state of 
armed neutrality." The people are cc sizing up " 
the parson, and making up their minds whether 
they are going to like or dislike him — and mean- 
time are treating him accordingly ! And there are 
other instances, where the relation of pastor and 
people is no longer a recent one, but where some 
painful and costly fidelity on the part of a pastor 
has earned him the dislike and antagonism of 
[ 298 ] 



SERMON 

ungodly people. And yet, again, there is that 
commonest of all situations where the Bishop on 
his visitation finds the " love of some grown 
cold," and a brilliant newcomer in a neighboring 
tabernacle drawing away the sensation -loving 
element in the congregation. It is situations such 
as these, I think, which are the great opportuni- 
ties for a Bishop, and which courage and tender- 
ness may wisely improve. The priest's lonely lot 
may wear another aspect when he who is both 
Father and Brother comes near, and touches and 
recognizes it ! I am myself the son of a Bishop; 
and shall I say that I most revere his memory for 
his great intellect, or his wide learning ? No ; it 
is rather because, whenever I go back to that great 
commonwealth of the whole of which he was once 
chief pastor, it is, though he has now been dead 
nearly forty years, to hear some fresh tale from 
priest or layman of talks which they had with him 
long ago, on the road, on the street, on a train, 
and through which shone neither authority, nor 
learning, but brotherhood I 

Ah, to see men's faces shining when you come 
and clouded when you go, believe me, men and 
brethren, this, for a Bishop, is the best reward of 
all ! I have known Bishops who were good and 
godly men, doubtless, but whose coming to any 
parish was anticipated with dismay, even as then- 
departure was hailed with joy ! 

And yet never in the history of this land was 
there so rare an opportunity for the Episcopate as 
to-day ! The Reformation, in breaking away 
from prelatical authority, went often to lengths 
[ 2 99] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

which none deplore to-day more unreservedly 
than some of the wisest and best of those who are 
afflicted by their consequences ; and an ecclesias- 
tical government which has wholly eliminated the 
paternal idea may have gained more freedom, but 
it has entirely lost some other things which are 
more precious. It is impossible to follow the 
history of the founding of the Church and not 
own that the personal element in it was first and 
paramount. When St. Paul is chiding those 
some of whom were cc of Paul and some of Apol- 
los, and some of Cephas," it is impossible to 
read his words and fail to see that he is striving 
to lead the thought of those to whom he writes 
up, through their devotion to particular earthly 
leaders, to the one Divine Leader ! And when 
the Church passes out of her earlier and fluid 
life into one that is at once more organized and 
more stable, there is — as Dr. Schaff, himself a 
Lutheran leader and scholar, has pointed out — 
no abrupt transition, no novel intrusion, but a 
natural and normal progress to the Episcopate of 
to-day ! It is such a fact, I cannot but think, 
which lifts the office into its most august light, and 
makes the Bishop all men's servant, because first 
he is all men's father. 

At any rate, it ought not to be hard to realize 
such a conception of the Episcopate here ! It 
was my rare privilege, being then myself a young 
presbyter of the mother Diocese, to be present at 
the consecration of the first Bishop of this. A 
little while before he had been at work in Emman- 
uel Church in Boston, and I beside him in old 
[300] 



SERMON 

Trinity. I was, at that time, Secretary of the 
House of Bishops, and it was my official duty, as 
in charge of the Testimonials of that Body (as is 
Dr. Hart to-day), to be present at that service. 
I am sure that I shall never forget it ; and that 
in it which most impressed me was the obvious 
sense, apparent in all his speech and bearing, on 
the part of the Bishop-elect, of the vast burden 
that he was taking up ! His presence here this 
morning restrains me from saying how nobly I 
think he has borne it; but even that shall not 
deprive me of the privilege of saying how true a 
father he has been to all his clergy, and to all his 
flock in this great Diocese ! Central New York 
was not early possessed by the Church whose sons 
and daughters we are, and when the Church came 
here, it was no disparagement to others to say that 
they looked at it as something of an intruder. 
That it brought much that other Christian bodies 
have not, and that, as time has gone on, the 
defects of these became more and more apparent, 
would have counted for little had it not been that, 
as he who was the chief representative of the 
Church in this Diocese went to and fro on his 
official errands, it became apparent to all that he 
stood for great ideals , and that it was as a Spiritual 
Force, incarnating the mind and heart of Jesus 
Christ, that he would fain promote its growth. 

I do not wonder, my dear brother, that when 
bidden to come and stand beside him as his coad- 
jutor, you should have hesitated to do so ! That 
was a characteristic incident that you related when, 
the other day in the New York Churchmen's 
[301 ] 



LAW AND LOYALTY 

Association, you told us of the letter to you from 
the venerable Presiding Bishop, in which he 
recalled the visit which, years ago, he and the late 
Dr. Francis Vinton had together made to Emman- 
uel Church, Boston, of which the Rev. Frederick 
Dan Huntington was then the Rector, and how 
Dr. Clark, as he and Dr. Vinton, at the close of 
the service, were walking away together, said : 
" Dr. Vinton, don't you wish that you and I 
could preach like that ! " 

Well, the rest of us, my brother, cannot do 
that; but we can make an Episcopate great by 
the love that shines through it. I recall with 
singular vividness the morning when, nearly 
twenty years ago, you came to me as to your 
Bishop, with a call from Grace Church, Utica, in 
your hands. You were then a junior assistant 
minister in Trinity Parish, New York City, and 
you spoke frankly of the limitations of your work. 
I told you to go to Utica, you remember ; and 
now they have called you back to serve Utica and 
all the rest I Your experience here, the warm 
place that long ago you won in the hearts of this 
people, and, added to this, the enlargement of your 
horizon as the Vicar of St. Agnes's Chapel in New 
York, have well fitted you, in my judgment, for 
the tasks that are before you ; and you are bring- 
ing, as I know, to the Diocese of Central New 
York a single and entire consecration of all your 
powers to the great work before you ! 

May God give you the hearts of all your flock, 
and, day by day, strength for all your burdens ! 
Those have been various, and some of them most 
[302] 



SERMON 

difficult, which you have just laid down ; and we 
of the mother Diocese who are now to lose you 
know well how grave and perplexing some of them 
have been. But you have borne them with a 
singular and beautiful courage and simplicity ; and 
we, who love you and are now to surrender you, 
can ask no better thing for you, or for Central 
New York, than that you shall give yourself to 
your new office and your wider work in the same 
unfaltering temper ! May He who loved you 
and gave Himself for you show you how, in love 
and sacrifice for Him and them, to serve the flock 
to which now His voice is calling you ! 



[303] 



INDEX 



Act of Uniformity 


16 


Carstensen,Mr. , the Rev. 


171 


Adrian I, Pope 


22 


Catholics, Old 


I I 2 


Anselm, St. 


08 
y 


Chalcedon, Council of 


2 I 


Apostolic College, Terms 


Charlemagne 


22 


of Commission 


22C 
j 


Charlemagne, The Age of 




Avians of the Fourth Cen- 




Wells 


277 

II 


tury, Newman 


j 1 


Christian Ministry His- 




Armenians 


1 12 


torically Considered. 




Armitage, Bishop 


I Q4 


Stanton 


I 07 


Athanasius 


98 


Christian Ministry, The, 




Augustine, St. I 89, 


I Q2 

y 


Gore 1 06, 


I08 


AylifFe, Parergon 


4-Q 


Chrysostom, St. 


QQ 
yy 






Church and the Age, The, 




Bacon, Lord, Essay on 




Dean Hook 


26 


Truth 


IO4 


Church, The, Locke 


104 


Bancroft, Archbishop, 




Church, The Genesis of 


Survey of the Pretend- 




the, Cotterill 


48 


ed Holy Discipline 


IO 


Claggett, Dr. Thomas 




Bartol, C. A.,D.D.,the 




John, the Rev. 


221 


Rev. , Church and Con- 




Clarkson, Bishop Robert 




gregation 238, 


241 


Harper 


178 


Bass, Edward, the Rev. 


221 


Clement, St. 98, 


192 


Benedict, St., of Monte 




Coleridge, Sir John T. 


16 


Casino 


39 


Co mm unit or ium, St. Vin- 




Benedictines, The 


40 


cent of Lerins 


IO4 


Bernard, St., ofClairvaux 


39 


Consubstantiation 


82 


Bonnechose, Cardinal 


24 


Contra Celsum, Origen 


IOO 


Brooks, Phillips, D.D., 




Copenhagen 


171 


the Rev. 223, 


284 


Cotterill, Dr., the Rt. 






Rev., The Genesis of 




Canons, Collection of 21 


, 22 


the Church 


48 


Capitularies 


22 


Creeds, The 85 


, 86 




[305] 





INDEX 



Darwin, Charles 


107 


vjnswoia, xvr. /iiexanaer 




Tlairi^c Tnnmiic n II 
Xy cLV ICo ) J. llOIllao J. • y IS * 


V ICIS, L11C XN.CV. 


221 


\J . , lllc XN.CV. / j 


200 


( Z- 1 / /I r n 1 n 71 *J ri a 

Kjruuf uiuii, 1 ric 


2 S 




z. 1 u 


Harris, Samuel S., D.D. 


Dprrpfnm of GraHan 77 


T I 2 
1 1 3 




j^igesc oi v^anons 


3° 


the Rev. 


1 


Dionysius Exiguus 


2 1 


jn.a1c.11, xJi . 




Discipline in Latin Com- 




jrid.wKins, r nncipai 


I02 


munion 2 I 


, 24 


jtliij, v^ciavia, lviiss 


162 


±J I Ulftc LjtgULlUTl UJ IVluiCJ) 




Hobart Tohn Hpnrv T) 

J. J. v-* Ljax u, 1 wim x x will y , . 




Warburton 


129 


T) flip Rpv 


2^2 






jriUUilUU.bC ALL 




Eastburn, Manton, D.D., 




H r\ Irm o n VP ? t n /i / f situ /i r 
X IVlllLicLily J\llUul LjU%U UJ 


the Rt. Rev. 


222 




5 2 


Eaton, Dorman B. 


1 4.1 


rnfifw r\ i hiTif /ill n T?7 c-f\ 
xxUL-y kjuli lb U/t>U l/idul/ CI " 


Edersheim, The Life and 




tion, The, Gore 


08 


Times of Jesus 


252 


Homer 


48 


Elliott, Robert, the Rt. 




Hook, Dean, The Church 


Rev/ 


177 


and the Age 


26 


Essays and Reviews 


17 


Huntington, F.D.,D.D., 




Eugenius III, Pope 


22 


the Rt. Rev. 


302 



Faith, Historic 
Faith, Rule of 
Faith, Standards of 
Freeman, J. E., the Rev. 

Gladstone, Polity of the 
Homeric Age 

— Juventus Mundi 

Gore, The Christian Min- 
istry 1 06, 

— The Holy Spirit and 
Inspiration 

— Roman Catholic Claims 

Gough, John B. 

Gratian, Decretum 22, 

Gray, Earl 166, 

Gregory Nazianzus 

GrifFen, Albert 



32 Ignatius, St. 38, 102 

26 Institutes of Canon Law, 
26 Owen 38 
168 Irenasus 103 
Irons, Prebendary 21, 22, 113 

48 Jerome, St. 189 
48 J^sus, The Life and Times 

of, Edersheim 252 
108 Juventus Mundi, Glad- 
stone 48 

98 

103 Kemper, Bishop 177 
148 Kensitt 135 

168 Lawlessness, Sacerdotal- 
98 ism, and Ritualism, 
153 MacColl 34 

[306] 



INDEX 



Lay, Bishop 

Life and Times of Jesus, 

The, Edersheim 
Life of Archbishop Tait, 

Newman 
Locke, Walter, the Rev., 

The Church 
Lowder, Charles 

MacColl, CanonMalcolm, 
Lawlessness, Sacerdo- 
talism, and Ritualism 

— Six Letters 
Mackay-Smith, Alexan- 
der, D.D., the Rev. 

Martineau, Dr. 
Mason 

Newman, John Henry, 

Arians of the Fourth 

Century 
— Life of Archbishop T ait 
—Tract XC 

Obelisk, Egyptian 
Odenheimer, William 

Henry, Bishop 
Olmsted, Charles Tyler, 

D.D., the Rev. 285, 
Origen, De Principiis 97, 

— Contra Celsum 
Ornaments Rubric 
Owen, Institutes of Canon 

Law 

Oxford, Vice- Principal of 
St. Mary's Hall 

Paddock, Henry Benja- 
min, D . D ., the Rt . Re v. 

Parergon, Ayliffe 



177 
252 



04 
24 



34 
37 

267 
100 



37 
88 

87 
33 
216 

2 93 
103 
100 
16 

38 
40 



223 
49 
[3 



Parker, Matthew, the 

Most Rev. 1 2 

Parker, Dr. Samuel, the 

Rev. 221 
Pius IX, Pope 22 
Polity of the Homeric 

Age, Gladstone 48 
Principiis, De, Origen 97 
Provoost, Bishop 221 
Public House Movement, 

The 169 
Purchas Judgment 16 
Pusey, Dr., Responsibility 
of the Intellect in Mat- 
ters of Faith 106 

Randall, Bishop 177 

Responsibility of the In- 
tellect in Matters of 
Faith, Dr. Pusey 106 

Revelation of the Risen 
Lord, The, Westcott 

Roman Catholic Claims, 
Gore 

Romilly, Sir Samuel 
Rowntree, The Temper- 
ance Problem and So- 
cial Reform 



253 

103 
33 



167 



SchafF, Philip, Rev. Dr. 

Scott, Bishop 

Seabury, Dr. Samuel, the 
Rt. Rev. 

Sixtus V, Pope 

Sherlock,Dr.,the Rt. Rev. 

Sherwell, The Temper- 
ance Problem and So- 
cial Reform 

Sidesmen 

Six Letters, MacColl 
07] 



300 



199 

33 
221 



167 

49 
37 



INDEX 



Smith, Sydney, the Rev. 52 
Spectator, The 92 
State, Church, and the 
Synods of the Future, 
Prebendary Irons 21, 23, 

113 



Stanton, Christian Min- 
istry Historically Con- 
sidered 107 
Stepney, Bishop of 167 
Stowell, Lord, in Lee* s 

Reports 64 
Syllabus of Pius IX 22 
Synodsmen 49 



Temperance Problem and 
Social Reform, The, 
Rowntree and Sher- 
well 167, 168 

Tertullian, Prascr. 9 102 
< — Preescr. 13 103 
Tract XC, Newman 87 



Ultramontanism 3 7 

Vincent, St., of Lerins, 
Communitorium 104, 136 

Vinton, Alexander Ham- 
ilton, D.D., the Rev. 264 

Vinton, Dr. Francis, the 
Rev. 302 

Warburton, Bishop, Di- 
vine Legation of Moses 129 

WashingtonianMovement 173 

Wells, The Age of Char- 
lemagne 277 

Westcott, The Revelation 
of the Risen Lord 253 

White, Wm.,D.D., the 
Rt. Rev. no, 200, 283 

Worship in the Church 62 

Worthington, George, 
D.D., the Rt. Rev. 175, 
179 



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